⏱️ The Best Minute: How to turn frustration into hope

Dec 19

💡 1 IDEA FROM ME

Frustration arises (and lingers) not from hard situations, but from hard or discouraging situations with no plan of attack.

If something isn’t working at your job, but you don’t know what is causing the issue, you’ll be frustrated.
If your marriage is in a hard spot, but you don’t know how to fix the problem, you’ll be frustrated
If your kid is struggling in school, but you don’t know what, in particular, to do about it, you’ll be frustrated
If you have a lingering physical ailment in your body, and you don’t know what type of rehab to do that will bring healing, you’ll be frustrated

Even if the problem isn’t improving right away, having a plan of action always removes the frustration. You may still wish the problem was resolved, but at least you are doing something about it that may lead to the result you desire.

Many times, it’s not the problem that is the problem, it’s the lack of direction on what to do about it. Here is a personal example.

There was a time when I was frustrated with my preaching skills, until I got a preaching coach who helped me work on areas to improve. I didn’t improve right away (and I’m still working on it!), but I had a course of action. My frustration diminished.

I’ve been writing this newsletter for three years now. There was a time when I became frustrated with the lack of growth of this newsletter. Then I spent time watching content on how to improve a newsletter (design, writing, how to grow an audience) and started successful newsletter writers on Twitter. Once I developed a course of action on how to improve, my frustration diminished.

It is ok to be stuck. It is great to want to fix a problem. The goal is to find a pathway forward. Even if it still takes time to get the result you want, you’ll no longer be living in frustration.

The best remedy for frustration is a plan. Find a plan, get some help, or develop a strategy. That is what will turn your frustration into excitement.

💬 2 QUOTES FROM OTHERS

I. A quote I saw this week (I could not find the original source) on how to tolerate negative opinions:

"To have earned the respect of just a few people one actually admires makes it much easier to tolerate the negative opinions of a great many fools."

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II. Jay Ferro on the stages of work:

“The three stages of career development are:

1. I want to be in the meeting

2. I want to run the meeting

3. I want to avoid meetings.”

💯 1 THING I RECOMMEND

My recent post on how I read 65 books in 2023.

This year I doubled the amount of books I typically read in a year and I didn’t even set out to do this. In this article, I share 5 practical things I did this year (that you can do too) to drastically increase how much I read

🤯 1 INTERESTING FACT

The original Rudolph was created in 1939 by Robert L. May as an assignment for the retail company Montgomery Ward. The department store created Rudolph the Reindeer as a marketing gimmick to encourage children to buy their Christmas coloring books.

Originally, Rudolph did not have a red nose. In that day and age, red noses were seen as an indicator of chronic alcoholism and Montgomery Ward didn’t want him to look like a drunkard.

Source: Fact Life