Frustration...Leave Me Alone

Frustration [fruh-strey-shuhn] –noun
1. to experience a series of frustrations before completing a project.
2. something that frustrates, as an unresolved problem.
3. a feeling of dissatisfaction, often accompanied by anxiety or depression, resulting from unfulfilled needs or unresolved problems.
 
Nothing is easy.  Even if you think its going to be when you get started.  Even if you have the greatest of intentions, the coolest of ideas... Things always seem to have a way of being much more than meets the eye.  As hard as you think something is going to be you end up wishing it were that easy. 

I don't know where it started, but there's always been an unspoken, underlying belief that just because we have a great idea, a good invention, a grand plan that it just HAS to work out.  Why shouldn't it?  So you try and try. You imagine. You dream. You plan, you scheme and you implement.  And in the it didn't go as you had planned.  In the end your time would have been better spent in a nice hot bath with a cheesy novel and a candle as your companions.

Or would it?  So, it didnt work out the way you had hoped. So?

Sometimes a perceived failure turns out to be a step in the right direction.  Or in a new, better direction.  One that we hadn't even thought of.  And sometimes it doesn't.  But either way, its not a failure.  Its a lesson.  The failure would be in not trying at all.  Failure is not believing in yourself and your idea enough to bring it to the light.  A great idea doesn't mean its going to be easy. In fact, unfortunately...quite the contrary.

So, yes...you really tried.  You put your heart and soul into it.  You stayed up past your bedtime dreaming. You could actually SEE it working out and imagined all the smiling faces as it smoothly went along just the way you had envisioned.... and still...it didn't work out.  And now you're sad.  You're disappointed. You're FRUSTRATED.  And guess what...its OK.  For a little while anyway.  Decide you're going to be upset and mourn the letdown of this segment of the plan then dust yourself off and begin again.  Too many really amazing ideas have fallen victim to the puddle of disappointment that follows the first few stumbles.  Take what you've learned and gently blow the rest away.  And do it with a smile.  Because when we fail we succeed.  We succeed in gaining experience-of what works and what doesn't.  So next time we are that much further ahead and we have that little pang of excitement that reminds us that we are that much closer to success.  Every disappointment has a lesson.  Take the lesson and get rid of the rest.  No room for storage here.  We need that valuable space for NEW ideas and plans.   So gather the pieces of your broken plan, have a fresh look at it now thats its been seemingly disassembled...and begin to build again.  But before you do...tell frustration that its done its job and now it can show itself out now...you have work to do.

So, it didn't work out.  And that's OK.  Because you're still here.  And you can try again.

"If God sends us on strong paths, He provides us with strong shoes"  Corrie TenBoom