(Super Coco from May 1st training session - video above is not related to post)
Last Wednesday my horse-riding lesson was aggravating. By the end of it I was upset, tired, and annoyed; in a single word, I was frustrated. But what is frustration on a horse if not a reflection of our own limitations?
As defined by the Cambridge dictionary, frustration is:
“the feeling of being annoyed or less confident because you cannot achieve what you want, or something that makes you feel like this”.
What I’m trying to get at here is the sense of insecurity (‘why am I not able to do this?’) coupled with dissatisfaction with oneself (‘you suck’). I’m happy I got to experience it while I’ve been on this journey, because it’s certainly not the first or the last time it will happen along the way. It’s time for me to learn how to process it as quickly and efficiently as possible.
What can I learn from the frustration I feel and how can I best use it? Frustration, in the case mentioned above with my horse, made me feel less confident and sad. The positive aspect of frustration, at least for me in this case, is that it fuelled my desire to understand what I was doing wrong and how to overcome it next time. So, in a certain way, it’s a motivator to change and improve.
For me, it’s hard to express some of those negative feelings, partly because I think it shows I’m weak. I therefore believe it’s time for me to understand that showing frustration, sadness, or ‘negative’ feelings is just showing you are human. It’s also healthy to let those feelings out so, in the future, I’ll try to be a person slightly more connected to my emotions. I’ll be able to feel, understand, express, and move on way faster than I am doing now.
What do you think? How do you deal with frustration?
