63. Creativity and Frustration

Frustration is an emotion that can be elusive in its origins while being capable of putting a halt to almost anything we're trying to accomplish.

We feel frustration doing something like putting together IKEA furniture. Sometimes it really is about the furniture. Other times we may have something entirely different lingering in the back of our mind making it difficult to use the hex key, thus derailing our ability to put the Früken shelves together.

We may buy a new tool or software that is supposed to make life easier, only to find it too complicated to use and too much of a burden or embarrassment to return. We may even feel a sense of failure tied to it.

Frustration is the feeling that arises when reality fails to meet a preconception, whether that vision is clear or blurry.

This week, we explore how frustration can be a great teacher if we pause to see what we can learn from it.

Transcript

Ah, it's going all wrong. Order the pieces of whatever's lying about. A screw is sitting there. Where did that come from? Frustration at work is quite the companion.

Digital, physical, even mental piles of whatever sits about as we try to build whatever. How is this ever gonna come together? The garage, the report, the dishes. What do I do? So what do we do?

When the Pieces Won't Come Together

Demands from others pile on. The budget, the stakes, hidden or in plain view, all pile onto the pressure and overwhelm. A Camera, and a Decision Somewhere I decided, in the wake of completing the Waves of Focus materials, that I might work on my YouTube channel, maybe something to enhance the Rhythms of Focus podcast.

A teleprompter would help me look at the screen. A webcam as opposed to a DSLR would save me some money. Research mode engaged. Days, if not weeks later, I emerge victorious. Decisions have been reached. Decisions themselves, these weighty beasts, desires, visions, fears, more ideally rest in reflection until they settle with some clear option forward

But so often they don't. The ordered supplies sit there, and things aren't working. So I might wonder, do I know what I'm doing? Well, the answer is no, otherwise things would be moving forward.

Will I know what I'm doing? Well, I don't know. I can only put one foot in front of the next. I think I may have made a mistake with that camera I bought. No, let me see how I can make it work.

Frustration. The heart of it is frustration, the sense that appears when what is being realized is somehow not meeting that preconception, as clear or as blurry as that vision might have been.

It's the same gap we find in story, that space between wish and fulfillment that just doesn't seem to resolve. But let me keep trying. Isn't that productivity? Sometimes.

Push or Run

Sometimes it's a matter of an unconscious fight playing out on the stage of the now, this anger at IKEA furniture that represents the troubles of an unsolved chronic argument in a relationship that has nothing to do with this.

A confusion with a report that plays out at a sense of loss at work. Other times, it really is just the furniture itself. How do we know the difference?

So often we can either push ourselves through or run. Pushing becomes hyper-focused, this unrelenting, "I need to do this. I need to get this done." Everything else is ignored. Seems like we're thinking something through, but in reality, we're being driven by that force unreflected.

When we run, we look for anything else that's easy to solve. That temptation to jump into email where we can mark something as read, to look at a short video on social media for some easy sense of consumption.

But what we lose, what I lose, is a recognition of frustration as teacher

Frustration as Teacher

Pausing to rest the mind on that sensation of frustration, sometimes we find a clue. In consideration, I might think of where the pieces are now.

The camera's well-featured, but those features conflict with the setup. I've been trying to make it work. What if I freeze it in place this way? What if I get something to block the glare? All of them might be useful to experiment with.

Where Bravery Comes In

But I gradually realize this resistance. I don't want to return it. Not only is it more time, but there's this sense of failure with it. Maybe imagined confrontation with the staff of the place that it's ordered from, the sense of mistake, error, part and parcel of the creative process.

And while I can consciously say that there might be some emotional part of me that just doesn't see it that way, there's another part that may. Once confronted, though, I can then say, "Oh, that's the point where I can apply bravery."

In retrospect, it seems simple. While the cost of returning something, the effort, the packing of stuff, yeah, it's there. It's the whatever that might come from conflict that blocks that true work.

Thought Born from Frustration

Frustration, when managed well, has opportunity to become thought. In fact, psychoanalyst Wilfred Bion would say that thought doesn't exist without it. If mastery is an ability to do something without thought, frustration gives us the path there, a reflection that something meaningful is attempting to unfold.

Deliberately pausing with those sensations, allowing thoughts to form from the emotions beneath as we witness the process, lets us see them in greater relief, lets us see the ideas below the surface, the greater meanings, the greater places for bravery.

Mentioned in this episode:

Waves of Focus YouTube Series

Look out for new episodes of the new Waves of Focus YouTube series here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJpQS5q6yvRw