An arresting and exhilarating fact about frustration: it’s not a set experience. It’s not a predictable science. How we handle it is subjective. It’s just an idea; a completely voluntary, community-supported, seductive set of sensations which has led us to believe we are about to enter emotional territory that should, at all costs, be avoided.
I mean, who celebrates feeling frustrated?
Have you ever seen someone spritz around the living room, elated, because they just aren’t sure about the answer to the question?
Or celebrating that they have literally no idea exactly what they should do next?
Or smiling like someone recently given a lifetime supply of cake for the simple reason they are fumbling around, all up in the business of their book, or project or thing, teetering with the same sense of balance you feel walking with a single high heeled shoe while the other one is barefoot?
And we don’t do this because we’ve been sold a complete porky about what being frustrated actually means. A bold, audacious lie.
Because while frustration might be, on the one hand, a vast and perplexing set of questions, on the other, it’s a whole card deck of answers.
The reason being this:
Frustration actually primes your brain for learning.
I mean, shut up!
All this time we’ve been taking out the proverbial restraining order and buying khaki jackets jizzed up for open carry in case frustration should enter-eth the room, and we’ve been citizen’s arresting the wrong bugaboo.
And let me tell you, this change to your perspective is going to turn your whole creative experience around.
Because instead of feeling *insert your favourite self-flagellating dish of choice here* when you feel frustrated, you can remind yourself that your twinkling brain is simply putting on her best gym-bunny outfit and is about to get, as our favourite 80’s Olivia Newton-John pop tune goes, Physical.
In fact, frustration- raw-dogging round for answers, shooting in the dark, letting yourself weave and wind between the conceptual and concrete- is what is known to Very Smart People Wot Study These Things as a ‘desirable difficulty‘.
A phrase I have added to my box of first-rate favourites along with ‘quality problem‘.
And to save you looking this up for yourself, a desirable difficulty is “an obstacle that makes learning more challenging, slower or more frustrating in the short term, but better in the long term.”
A quote from Range, by David Epstein.
If that wasn’t such a long definition, I would ask you to tattoo it on your hand.
I can’t believe my exquisite luck to have learned this. And being able to remind ourselves of this quite early on- that frustration’s not a quit sign, and that it doesn’t mean anything more than a temporary flailing round of neuron’s while the right ones try to find each other– saves us a lot of upset.
Not to mention the potential loss of truly brilliant projects, and businesses, and art that don’t make it through this cardinal creative chasm.
So when I ask you, who celebrates feeling frustrated? I can now confidently chirp back, well that’s most definitely me!!
Because I know- we know- the truth of what’s happening *taps index finger briskly on side of noggin*. That we simply skirting round the territory that will soon reveal itself as better and more brilliant.
Shall we have more cake while we’re here, fabulous, frustrated and figuring it out? I think that sounds like a most excellent idea.
xx Jane
PS. Yes, that’s right. improvisational dance is the appropriate response to frustration. Eleventy out of ten highly recommend.
PPS. Brain-priming frustration factoid also taken from science studies outlined in Epstein’s Range.
PPPS. If you’re in a frustration sticky patch and need a fellow creative homie to help you through the swamp, comment below, tell me what’s happening and I’ll see if my brain can you shoot you back some fresh ideas.
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