MORE OR LESS FRUSTRATION

It's up to you

image of coffee messily poured from Tyler Nix on Unsplash

​You can set up your life (or this hour, this day, this week, this era) so that it’s more and more and more frustrating.

Or you can set it up so that it’s more and more and more easy and flowy and fine.

Basically, what follows is a simple story to illustrate.

I just had a typical bout of grand frustration while doing taxes. (Not tax time you say? Um, some of us file for an extension when you’re getting yours done on time, so our due date is coming right up.) (Are you starting to get my relationship with taxes?)

So it all started with some thorny stuff. I got frustrated fast, because I came in with the idea that I really wasn’t into this. (Ah, the power of opting in 100 percent.) I was also soothing the frustration as I went, not just letting it rip. I was doing fine. But I wasn’t all joy and sunshine. Let’s say that soft, expansive belly breaths maybe weren’t predominant. Or maybe not in the vicinity.

And then, things got thornier. And I got more frustrated trying to get help from customer service or even trying to get to a human being. Even the chat was intercepted by a mean-girl kind of robot. And I permitted myself a bit of railing to my mother, whose house I’m living in for the purpose of being helpful and uplifting, so … mission not accomplished.

And then a bunch of data got purged from Quickbooks. It all seemed very random, like someone flushed a toilet in a parallel Universe and my data went down the invisible pipes.

I have standards and quite refuse to literally slam my forehead repeatedly into the wall, so I did not do that. I did get up and move away from the task.

If you’re getting anxious, let me tell you this would all end well. I would later be involved in an interesting hours-long process getting data transferred back in. I would learn some stuff. When I solved the puzzle (and I would solve the puzzle), it would be an almost funny and cute matter of two little bunny-eared quotation marks that had hopped away to a distant field, probably very sweetly, maybe in that same parallel universe where that mysterious toilet was, when they were very much needed for the purposes of proper coding within a bunch of crammed-together words and numbers in a tiny font that cryptically contained both my data and a secret code. This code, properly presented, would then allow Quickbooks to open the door to let in the data that I wanted there. I would manage to understand the pattern and see where it was disrupted and …  I would fix it. No bunnies would be hurt in the righting of this data. I wouldn’t even be rough on the computer keys or even my own system. I would breathe lovely, soft belly breaths, while sitting and working in positions that would require no chiropractic adjustments down the line. All would work out.

Fucking Eureka. And bonus, it’s really kind of fun and wondrous to crack a code, right?

Honestly, most of the time I affirm that everything’s always working out for me. I lost track of it for a minute there.

Okay but let me backtrack. How did I get there? Note that I was already witnessing myself FROM THE BEGINNING because my policy and preference is not to live with frustration. I don’t judge it when it comes. However, I witness it coming in and feel the effects and then I usher it out.

(This takes practice, folks, and just noticing when the judgments come in and dropping them again. Keep dropping your self-judgments. They serve nothing except to keep you in modes that better match frustration than flow. They’re not fun, they’re not kind, they don’t make you a better person. They literally serve nothing you’re after.)

Speaking again from my policy and preference (to be clear, not what I was doing with this round of tax work), I do whatever it takes to release any grip on an outcome, a timing, a way the process must go. As quickly as I notice such interference, I let it go and align with reality. I soothe myself with presence in body and breath. I look away from the thorny task and get my alignment back, then I come back again—even if that means no more than a 5-minute break to look up at the sky and breathe and watch the breeze move some leaves around or drink some water or do some stretches or wash a few dishes or whatever.

Photo of person looking up at the sky & some passing birds from 邓 子彦 on Unsplash

Back to presence, back to body and breath, back to alignment THEN back to work.

So I wasn’t exactly doing this with tax work. I was watching the frustration (self-witnessing is good and helpful) and I was not entirely believing the messages the mind was forming about what was supposed to go differently or feel better (seeing thoughts as thoughts, not reality, and not believing them is good and helpful), but I also did not properly and fully INTERRUPT it.

So more frustration accrued.

By the time I sat down to spend some comfortable hours cracking the code, a true interruption had taken place. I had stopped. Surrendered. Let go of alllll the things I wanted that I wasn’t getting in this scenario.

I happened to be slated that day to do some EFT/tapping with a group of people on zoom and when we had some minutes left at the end, I brought in this topic. It yielded this 10-min EFT session you might try when you have some frustration about techno-trouble, or about current customer-service realities, or about anything that you believe should be less fraught with trickiness, thus making you more frustrated in the face of reality.

I felt so much better after the tapping.

And then I didn’t go back to frustration. I went back to work already breathing well, and I just settled in, staying conscious of the breath, for whatever was ahead. Which turned out to be some hours. And I got into the puzzle of it in that way that puzzles are actually fun, even when you’re kind of frowning at them going, Well, NOW what?

Because Now what? is in fact a very good question and typically invites the next one thing to try. Especially if you’re in your body, and your breath is flowing.

Also, I played soothing music on YouTube while I worked. Whenever I happened to stop in and see who was swimming by in the ocean footage that went with the music, I kind of wanted to cry, but not the way cruel techno-trouble games in the multiverse make you cry. Just the way dolphins swishing through blue love with little half-smiles on their relaxed and earnest faces makes you cry. Don’t even get me started with the giant turtles. (Though the soothing-music video does start with a giant turtle.)

I didn’t even finish in that sitting. I went to bed early when I felt the first whiff of frustration coming back in. I got up and started fresh and full of hope. I found those two missing quotation marks very quickly, gently grabbed two new ones by the ears, plunked them in, and carried on with a flowy version of finishing my taxes.

Seriously, folks. There’s no problem if we get super frustrated by life’s potentially frustrating things. And we don’t need to fault ourselves for that. Most others wouldn’t fault us.

But we also don’t need to rev up the frustration, and feel justified in it, and rail (and keep railing, and rail to a bunch of people) (and keep railing inside our own minds), and keep creating more of that. Because that will and must keep creating more of that.

As soon as you can interrupt it, INTERRUPT IT. And do whatever you know to do to get your alignment back. And then, if you’ve revved up a bunch of frustration, you may need to take a while in the unraveling, so drop in for whatever it takes. Breathe. Listen to soothing music. Let some part of you weep quietly with achy joy because, in the meantime, there are sea creatures somewhere being too wondrous for words and truly embodying the flow.

We can live in peace and flow. Or we can live in frustration. And that’s true with hard things and things that go wrong and things that are just wrong on this planet and in our current setups at our current level of evolution. And it’s also true when things are relatively wrinkle-free and flowing along.

The more we flow peacefully, present, opting in, the more things flow in general. The more we create frustration and amplify that, the more things bump along uncomfortably or screech to a halt.

So don’t expect yourself to flow nonstop. Do interrupt yourself when you’re out of the flow. And gently soothe yourself back into alignment. Create more and more and more alignment and more and more flow.

Love & blessings, Jaya