LIFE GREATEST FRUSTRATION

“What frustrates you most about life?”

The frustrations people submitted ranged from economic to familial, psychological to political. They were all universal human concerns — problems men and women from all walks of life struggle with every single day. Many of them focus on the same themes we explore in our live residential programs and on the podcast. Several were questions I’ve wrestled with in my own life.

Inability to Pursue Goals

The post that caught my eye is something we can all relate to: the challenge of committing to the plans we have for ourselves.

How difficult it is to find and recognize the steps that you need to take to achieve reasonable, achievable goals. We know that it’s possible to achieve success. Many of us are willing and capable of applying ourselves, but the path to those goals, and the people, assets, and resources available to help us are obfuscated.

Everyone — guy or gal, old or young, successful or just starting out — knows how difficult this can be. Let’s break down the challenge, because there are actually two distinct pieces here.

The first piece is identifying what you have to do specifically to achieve your abstract goals. I suspect that this has a decent grasp on what he/she wants to achieve — to have a stable career, to own a home, to find a partner, etc. — but can’t seem to translate those goals into the right actionable steps.

The second piece to this puzzle is identifying the people, assets, and resources that can help you achieve your ambitions.

As a starting point, have a listen to our toolbox episode on social capital basics, where we cover high-level strategies for taking stock of your relationships.

When it comes to your own skills and resources, I’d also take a deep inventory of the unique skills you’ve developed up until now. Don’t be afraid of unusual skillsets — being a contradiction can actually be the key to a killer talent stack. We can’t use what we don’t know we possess, which is why this exercise is so important.

Finally, use all of the resources above to take an inventory of the people in your life — whom you know, what their skills are, what they need, and how you can help them. Again, the social capital intensive will be a huge asset to you here. Like skills, we need to know who is in our network before we can capitalize on it.

When you did not get the credit you deserve.

Even worse when someone else got all the glory. Work toward finding more contentment and appreciation in your own personal accomplishments. Break free from the need to be approved by others.

Not keeping promises.

Our intentions sometimes get the better of our actions. It is certainly much better not to make lofty unfulfilled promises, but rather to quietly carry out what you intended to do. It is better to underpromise and overdeliver than overpromise and underdeliver.

So rather than sitting with these frustrations, I recommend using them to discover that there are opportunities and solutions waiting for you the moment you decide to take them on.

You can find adventure in everyday life. You can overcome your fear of networking. You can achieve your goals. You can overcome envy and resentment. And you can learn to accept your cognitive biases. It just takes some reframing, self-analysis, and hard work.

As Proust said, “My destination is no longer a place, rather a new way of seeing.”

And our frustrations are some of the best ways to find that new way of seeing.