Overcoming Low Frustration Tolerance

In my most recent blog I discussed a detractor, low frustration tolerance, and explained how it could stop you in your tracks.

There’s nothing wrong with getting frustrated. We all get frustrated on occasion; it’s a perfectly human response to not getting our way, or when things don’t go the way we planned. The problem arises when our reaction to these frustrating things gets in the way of achieving our goals.

Victor Maslow, the grand master of motivation, theorized that people with high tolerance for frustration probably have increased frustration-tolerance because of earlier gratification. “People who have been satisfied in their basic needs throughout their lives, particularly in their earlier years,” he has written, “seem to develop exceptional power to withstand present or future thwarting of these needs simply because they have strong, healthy character structure as a result of basic satisfaction. They are the ‘strong’ people who can easily weather disagreement or opposition, who can swim against the stream of public opinion and who can stand up for the truth at great personal cost.”

But there is hope even if we do have low frustration tolerance. I say that because there are three strategies we can implement to increase our tolerance for frustration.

Strategy 1. Change our attitudes about frustration

It’s been theorized that some people have low tolerance for frustration because they think if they don’t get their way or if things don’t go the way they are supposed to, the consequences will be horrible. If you feel that way, you need to change that attitude. Being intentional man means you chose your response. Give yourself permission to experience the frustration, and move on. Tell yourself, “It’s not the way I want it, but it is tolerable. Even though it makes me disappointed, even though it makes me annoyed, I can tolerate it. I do not need to avoid it. I do not need to structure my life so I do not experience frustration. Frustration is not going to kill me.”

Strategy 2. Balance the long term and the short term

This strategy also involves being intentional man. It requires that you look at what is frustrating you. Often you will find out that the frustration involves your desire for short term satisfaction, at the detriment of your long term goals. When you see that not getting the short term desire may actually improve your life, in the long term, the frustration will not be as great.

Strategy 3. Play with frustration

This third strategy involves you intentionally putting yourself in situations in which you are likely to encounter frustration. The purpose is for you to experience frustration so you can see it may be uncomfortable, it may be inconvenient, but it is not going to kill you. You would prefer that things are different, that things were as they were supposed to be, but you can live with them the way they are.

There is hope if you have not had the earlier gratification that creates people with high tolerance for frustration. By practicing these three strategies, you can become one of the strong people that Victor Maslow wrote about.