In this episode, we take a close look at frustration and uncover effective ways of working through the madness this emotion frequently evokes.

About the Host:

Jani Roberts is the Owner of Alignment Essentials, a health and wellness company spanning the fitness, self-improvement, and mindfulness spaces. She is the creator of the Warrior® Workout, Moving Meditations™, Inspirational Conversations™ and all of the Alignment Essentials programming content. In addition, Jani is an International best-selling author of the book, Navigating the Clickety-Clack, How to Live a Peace-Filled Life in a Seemingly Toxic World.

Jani has over 40 years of experience in the health and wellness field. She owned and operated a large gym franchise in Florida, as well as a boutique studio for several years where she specialized in health and wellness related services, products, preventative health education, personal training, small group fitness classes, private nutrition and health coaching.

She has literally trained hundreds of thousands of instructors around the world, and she was the featured choreographer and performer on numerous training DVDs. She has presented for dozens of large Health and Wellness brands such Nike, and Adidas. She holds several certifications through ACE, AFAA and NASM.

Jani travels extensively as a speaker and presenter sharing her Alignment Essentials wellness tools and helping people find more joy in their lives and is currently training at the Shamanic Institute of Healing. 

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What? Life isn't supposed to suck. Get out of here. Life is supposed to be good for me. I don't think so. Truth? Did you know that you have the power to create your own reality? True? Did you know that you can live the life that you've always desired? Holy? That's right. And that's why we're here. Are you ready? Unless you're on Joy overload, you've come to the right place. It's time to get out of your own way and start creating more of what you want. And less of what you don't end up with the excuses. I'm your host, Jani Roberts. Let's do this.

We are back. What's up? What's up, guys? Welcome. Welcome. I am here to share with you this week. Some of the crap that happened that I just cannot get my head around and it left me so frustrated. Ah, so upset. So annoyed. Yeah. I just couldn't control it. Go figure. And I just had to chat this out with you guys. Because this is how I you know, work out my frustration. We do it together. So what's this all about? I, you know, been doing my work stand out in front of it. Really? Feeling good. And then this old thing, I was just talking about this, not that many episodes ago, maybe last episode just drifts in. And bam. I'm gone by, like, right back in that moment. Feeling the madness. Feeling the madness. So I did some work around it. But I have to tell you, I was really looking forward to this episode, and being able to share it here with you. Because I know you get me. And I know you feel what I'm saying. I mean, frustration is uncomfortable. It leaves me in a place of unwanted thing. I get stuck real quick. It's slow. And it's steady. It's a little sneaky. You know, like, if you think about anger as being quick and aggressive, like, boom, you just go there. And it's almost like, Whoa, I didn't even it's too late. But frustration is like creeps in. And for me it was around a particular person. And I know that we're not completely in sync, this is not a surprise. But because I'm doing the work, I'm trying to use this indicator of my family to get out in front of it and learn something from it, and not just suffer through it not done with that nonsense. So anyway, I came in contact with this person. And that just last time I was around them, it didn't make any difference. That was totally chill, cool, everything was good. I didn't even have to try to be good. I just was I didn't feel any resistance at all. And yet this time, I was like, blown away. It was instantaneous. I mean, I'm still as you can tell, slightly dropped. It just feels like this quiet emotion that builds up and I don't even know it's building up. And it because it doesn't surface immediately.

It just like it's like a left hook. I'm like, boom, well what happened? You know, I'm down before what actually happened? So hey, what can I say I'm a work in progress. So I did some breathing, some deep breathing. And at first I started to feel myself getting angry, I guess would be the best emotion to tap into. found myself getting angry at myself for even going there. Like right away I started beating up on myself. And then I took the pause, thank goodness for the pause because it didn't have to go any further than that. There was a time when I would have lost my temper. Physically, I probably would have been twitching, trying to control myself physically. I would have bailed I would have just bolted out of there and not even dealt with any of my own feelings. I might I might have become well obviously anxious but but sad like disappointed because I didn't feel like I had the self confidence or skill set or whatever I feel like I should have by now to not get sideswiped.

Back in the day I would have I wouldn't have slept. If this would have happened back in the day. I would I wouldn't have slept, I'd have been all consumed. I might even just drank a bottle of wine and neutralized it. And I got no judgment around any of that. I might have gone to the gym and worked out so hard almost to the point of like, counterproductive activity, you know, just overtrained, try to dump that disappointment, stress, self abuse, whatever you want to call it. Or I might have just picked up a bag of chips or something and gotten away. Take your pick. Anyway, I had to reflect on that, and give myself credit. And that was how I started to spin it. And I will be honest with you, even if I had done any of those things that I'm hoping I will no longer do. For these reasons, you know, as a response to something I can't control. I'm in a place now, where I still wouldn't be angry with myself if I did it. Because sometimes you just have to let yourself be. You just have to make your way through it. I mean, some stuff is just a lot harder than other stuff. And if we need to go there, then we need to just go there. But we have to know that we won't stay there that long. Not as long as we used to. And that's that's progress. That's we're progressing, right? We're, we're working through it. We're finding our way takes us right back to sift and sore sift and sort. Yeah, so this frustration, this very common emotional response is pretty much to the opposition or to the opposing. So if you relate it to anger, it feels like annoyance. And I mentioned earlier disappointment. What else am I vibe Am I getting here? Struggle? Yeah, struggle. So it sneaks in, right? It rises up from some kind of resistance in our experience. Something that probably, obviously, I am not in your head, I have enough issues with my own, but probably is not flying solo. It's not on its own. It's connected to past experiences. And it's likely to keep us a bit apart from who we really are tends to want to separate us from our truth.

Yeah, that pretty much sums up how I felt. So well, I didn't, you know, jump from a frustrated feeling into anger and just completely melt down. I certainly was surprised. I was surprised and disappointed. However, I was also slightly entertained by it. This is the weird part. The weirder part, this is a part because it came a little you know, like maybe two minutes after this confrontation, it wasn't really a confrontation. But anyway, it was a confrontation for me. And it didn't, it was a long, all of this happened very quickly. And I was in a better place. But I still went there. And as I paused and I gave myself, you know, not just in the moment when it happened, I did that. But then afterward, instead of getting all in my head and you know, starting to beat myself up, I just sat longer and took deeper breaths. So instead of one or two, I took several. And I looked at it. And I thought, Wow, I'm starting to really get this. I looked at what's going on in my life right now, and how much I have on my plate. And I realized that I was stressed out. Now, stress can be a confusing subject. And I'm sure we'll talk about that one too soon. But it is powerful, as we all know, to the point of affecting us on a cellular level. But I believe that this response that I had in this situation was a result actually of the stress it was compounded, if you will so this compounded feeling surfaced. In this situation. It just kind of triggered it.

And I was off and running with my crazy self sometimes. So we need to know this is common and we all deal with it. But why? So that was a huge aha moment for me. It was two minutes, I was able to identify it within another minute as related to something else completely different that was going on in my life. And really take a deep breath. And I was just saying, like, Oh, now I get it. This is not that big of a deal. I don't need to give all my power away to this person who I thought I had kind of gotten over. And it's not really the best choice of words, is it? So it's not about getting over anyone. It's just about letting it go. Kind of getting over yourself. Just let it go. It's not working out. It's not broke, don't fix it's not your responsibility. Just let it go. Move on toward the joy. Follow your inner guidance that's was going to keep us in that good feeling place. I mean, come on. We know this. Doing it though. Yes, we know it but doing it. So we know it's common. We know we all deal with it. And this was very short term. For me, this was not a big deal. A long deal, I should say. Because I have been frustrated over one thing for not minutes, not hours, not days, not weeks, not months. Yeah, years. And if I really dove into it, I don't think I would find it helpful at this point. But if I chose to it might even be decades, there might be one or two things that I carried for decades. So hey, this connection that we have to our memories, into our old beliefs, particularly when we're intentionally trying to set new beliefs, it is really powerful. And all of our experiences, our entire journey is connected to our now in a good way. So being able to identify what really caused this feeling, provided me with incredible amount of relief and peace. Because I then knew that I'm, again, was reminded that I'm on the right track. I'm doing this work. So I did speak to a good friend who's on this journey as well. And it was a really fun conversation. Because you know, as you do this, as you really have these conversations, as we're connecting in this way, things are just going to start changing, you're going to start thinking about things differently. And you're going to attract in your experience, like minded people. Just like you've done when you've attracted people into your life, that were like minded that maybe weren't so healthy, so good for you. But you had to figure that out to know what you wanted, and what would feel good to you and what what you wanted a relationship to be. That's the contrast, right? That's, that's the process, embrace the contrast. So this constant state of frustration that many people live in, leads to so much contrast, and what to them is going to just feel like an avalanche of problems. It's huge. So what are the triggers for you, maybe you want to grab a pen and paper, I don't know, throw it in your phone. But it's important to identify, even if it's just like the top three. So that when you're dealing with that, because we're gonna have to do it sometimes, right? Let's say you, let's say your job stresses you out. You could love your job, but you could still have a stressful day in it. That could be one, that when you particularly if you're doing work that isn't serving you, it's just no longer serving you it just straight up stresses you out, there's less joy than more joy in it. The feeling of not being able to have what we desire, that feeling of frustration. Maybe you've been working towards something for a long time in your life, and you just can't figure out like why the heck you can't get it. Boy, I can relate to that. Been there several times in my lifetime. The interesting part I think most of us would say is that with time we do figure it out. And we it all sorts itself out. What about having a situation that needs your attention? It's a problem. Let's just label it as a problem. And you need to figure that problem out. You need to find a solution to that problem. Yeah, definitely. I'm just thinking think write it down. I'm giving you a pause here.

So whatever the three are, maybe another one is a certain environment. Maybe another one is just one individual. person that just seems to just send you straight into that state of frustration. Maybe it's a certain subject, people begin to talk about it. I mean, we can go really simple and go politics and religion. Okay? So, you know, something like that you just like, No, no, no, I'm not engaging. But again, sometimes people come in, you're not expecting it left hook, boom, right, you just feel like you've been taken out your feet have been pulled right out from underneath you. It's it just, yeah, you can feel me, you can feel me. So if we continue in this way, and we don't have the tools to deal with the frustration, we can dive into a variety of unhealthy states of mind, that really affect our well being and our mental health, we can become depressed, we can become stressed to a degree that it does affect our health, we can become violent, we can physically write, we can also become violent, we can attack ourselves emotionally, or attack other people, which is really attacking ourselves. Because if we're having this conversation in our mind, like, you wait till the next time I get with them and edited or bla bla bla, you know, we're really beating ourselves up. They're not even in the room. So we're definitely not affecting them. And this can also make us feel as though we're failing. Right? We can't, can't manage our own mind. It's like our thoughts are thinking us. So well, this feeling of frustration can come from like, I don't know, what do you guys? Like? It comes from inside and outside? Right? Because if there's a trigger outside, then we respond internally, we might also respond, like I mentioned physically, but yeah, it's, it can be a slippery slope, because I don't know about you. But I've allowed myself to get frustrated to the point of saying and doing things that did not serve me. I did not really mean them. I was reacting, I didn't pause. And it ultimately caused me more problems than anyone else. Ultimately, and I just in the moment did not feel good physically. I didn't feel good about myself. And that lingered that lingered it's really hard on the body really hard on the body. I know people who have had worked with that have been so frustrated about things. And it's so dominant in their mind that they start dreaming about it. So they don't even get a break when they go to sleep. They still are dealing with the frustration, okay, that's exhausting. Or maybe it actually keeps you up.

I mentioned the insomnia earlier. Man, I suffered from that for a long time. That's, that's tough. You really start losing it when you don't get enough sleep. And I'm not one that needs a ton of sleep. You might be like that, hey, I'm going on five or six hours, particularly if it's uninterrupted and then you might be like, oh, hell, no, I gotta have at least eight to nine. Hey, we're all different. There's no judgement. Nothing wrong with sleeping. I'm a big advocate. Now, in this practice, one of my favorite things to do. I dare you to try this is take a nap. You get frustrated, take a nap. Now, in my mind when someone first said that to me, I thought nap sir. That's just like not dealing with the problem. Naps are for wimps. Not that I didn't ever nap. But like that's just a way of bailing and not facing what needs to be faced. And maybe you could look at it like that. But that wasn't what I was being taught. What I was being taught was stop thinking.

Pause. Quiet your freakin mind. You're just making it worse. Calm down. And while you're hearing this, it's like sandpaper when you're frustrated. Like are, you know, that's that struggle. So when I take a nap, I stopped thought. And if I dream, I'm probably not going to, you know, be aware of that until I wake up. Nightmares are different, right? And frustration can lead to that. But we want to get out in front of it. Before that happens. For sure. So when I take that nap, I stopped thought now here's the here's the cool part. And we talked about this in the early episodes of this podcast. So if you haven't listened to the first three or four, there's a lot of foundational teachings there. I encourage you to go back and listen again or listen for the first time and a lot of this will will start to gel for you when we take this pause and we stopped thought we slow down the momentum of what isn't working. And when we wake up, we have a short very short window, where we're not thinking about it. So fill this out with me, you know, you go to sleep, you first wake up and you kind of wake up and then you wake up. And if you wake up to an alarm, it's a little bit different, but you wake up gradually, I hope, I hope you don't have to jump out of bed. Unless it's just with so much enthusiasm. You can't stand it. But you've got that moment where you can breathe, and choose. And then there it is, like, oh, that's what I went to bed with. We're not given this any more of our time, attention, or energy. Now, I know, it's really, really easy for me to say this. But here's the deal. Let's say I go to sleep with difficulty after a loved one transitioned. So this is heavy on my heart. And when I wake up, I just, as soon as I woke up a concert back in, I just want to pull the covers over my head, but there's still it's still softer. It's not at full throttle yet. So I still have a window. And I can take a deep breath, and I can pause and I can find something to appreciate. Or something to distract myself with. Maybe your cats on the bed with you. And they you wake up and they start purring, you know, or your dog is nearby. And you can hear that the tail thumping, because he know you're, you're waking up and it's chow time, there are little things, maybe it's a soft rain. Maybe it's the first snow of the season. But if you're doing this work, you will recognize those things, I promise you it might be a little bit more challenging in the beginning, but you will recognize them. And this is how we stop this spiral. Right? I'm always mentioning going down the rabbit hole and just indicating that we get wound up wound up wound up and then like it's, it's we're at, we're on our way now, it's too hard to back out of it. And if this is going on all day long, we're going to be struggling in our place of joy. We're going to be struggling to feel really good. So it's it's really important and fun to look at this. So we're going to identify, right, you got your notepad, we're going to identify what what is it? What are those top two or three things. And once we've done that, we're going to connect now you guys can always connect with like minded people through these eight teachings on Facebook, any social media platform, you can email us you can, you can check out our courses, you can do whatever you want, you can go talk to your it did I'm not saying in any way shape or form it needs to be through A E or with a E, wherever you are feel you feel led to go, but go in a healing direction. I'm seriously suggesting that that I know what you should do. But I would not recommend that you go talk to somebody who's just going to exasperate it make it worse than it is. That's not going to be helpful. And sometimes we are really drawn to that drama. But having someone listen and just being able to verbalize is really cool. We do a lot of journaling, when we work this practice because we find it helpful. And it doesn't need to be writing novels, it can be however you want it to be, we give you a lot of options there. And I'm happy to share more about that.

But we've got to find an alternative, right, we've got to pivot we've got to shift. And this is again, where you can certainly turn to a moving meditation, or whatever meditation you choose to dump and release that frustration. I use the moving meditations, I use our Tai Chi, I use our Chi Gong, I use it all. Whatever feels like the right tool to use in the moment. But we're no longer going to resist what's happening. That's the big one. Take it with you. And just let it trickle behind you like go for a walk or run or whatever it is that makes you happy. And you'll start out maybe at a more of a fast pace with that frustrated energy. And as your body moves and it produces those endorphins, and you begin to relieve that feeling of stress and frustration. You'll just find yourself getting calmer and calmer and calmer until you are without that level of frustration. I'm not saying it's gone completely may need to do more work around it. I certainly did. But it didn't take that long is my point. It was pretty quick. It's so important to know that this is not a feeling to push against. It's a teacher. It's an indicator. You are the student you are the master you get to choose. You stand in control you are in your power This is truth. And you know it, you guys you know it, no matter what kind of crap is going on in your life. I don't care how bad how deep and shit you are, you know, you can turn this, you may just not know quite how. And now you've got some great tools. Go put them to work, play with this be easy about it. Last thing you want to do is get frustrated doing the work that's supposed to be helping you to ease your frustration. Have fun with it. Be easy with it. I look forward to talking to you guys. Next time. I'd love to hear a little bit about it in social media. What kind of frustration you're dealing with. All good. All good. All right, we will be in touch. Stay well. Let it go. Peace.