Ep #6: Frustration + Choosing Your Response with Lulu Cheng

Emily
Welcome to Emotional Leadership, the podcast for high achieving leaders. Because healthier emotional lives means stronger leadership, thriving teams and much bigger results.

Welcome! Today we’re going to put together everything we learned in the last three episodes. The four ways we respond to an emotion. The self-coaching model. And the realization that everything we want, we want because of how we think we’ll get to feel when we get it, and everything we don’t want is because of how we’re afraid we’ll make ourselves feel if it does happen.

In this episode I’m going to show you how to reprogram your brain and build a new emotional habit, so that you stop resisting frustration and start allowing it. So that instead of stewing in it, or having it punch you in the face like it feels like for me, you’re able to jump back in to important conversations and relationships at work and show up in the way you WANT to be showing up.

We’re going to talk about this skill in the context of Frustration. Today’s guest, Lulu Cheng, is a Product Manager at Pinterest. And I agree with her that frustration is a frequent emotion for many of us at work. I also think that it’s one most of us are able and willing to recognize when it happens. Those features together make it a great starting place for learning to intentionally cultivate new responses to the circumstances around us.

So the skill I’m going to teach you today revolves around one core concept: We can’t prevent feelings we don’t like from happening. But if we’re willing to allow them in our bodies for a minute or two without trying to shove them away, we CAN teach our brain new playbooks for what to do next.

I want to share two stories from my recent work life.

I’m helping design a process at work, and I LOVE this project. It’s the sort of framework plus cultural creation I find very satisfying. We’re solving big problems for engineers–super happy. But I noticed myself feeling frustrated during a meeting recently. I’d suggested changing our approach to a pretty major component of the process. Someone else had said “Yes, I agree!” but then they restated the old idea I was explicitly disagreeing with.

First, my shoulders pushed downward into my chest, and then my chest tightened like it was creating a big, tense T out of my body. My jaw clenched. My nose wanted to wrinkle a little bit. And then I noticed I was feeling frustration! My first instinct was to drop into it and stew. But I knew that I was already starting to get distracted from the meeting, and I really didn’t want that. So instead I started to clamp down on frustration and push it away, to resist it. Of course, since I’ve been studying emotional responses, I eventually recognized that as resisting frustration. And I know that I want to allow emotions instead of resisting them. Because resisting takes my continued energy, as you’ll see in my second story. And allowing it, sure, it takes a moment of me paying attention to it right then and sometimes it takes some conscious effort to let the emotion flow through me. But it passes pretty quickly and then I’m back to however I want to be showing up, I have more conscious control of my body and my brain again, and I get to nudge them in the direction that I want to be going in.

So I took an extra moment to tune into my frustration. To recognize that it was being created by the thoughts “This is inconvenient.” “Now this project will take me more time from my already busy day.” and “You should just be able to think the way I do when I explain it.” Doesn’t even make sense, but it’s what I was thinking and it was causing me frustration. I quickly created a model in my head for how I wanted to think, feel, and act instead, noted it down on my notepad, and concentrated on that new thought as I re-joined the conversation.

In this moment I resisted frustration, but I noticed it and was able to jump back in and be effective in the rest of the conversation. And that’s because instead of putting all my energy into shoving that emotion away, I was able to give it space to pass through me to run its course for the 90 seconds it’s going to exist from that one thought. And then I let the thought creating the frustration go, I let the feeling of the frustration in my body go, and I intentionally created something new.

Sometimes it will take several cycles of that, by the way. Don’t assume that something has gone wrong just because three minutes later, you find yourself feeling frustration again. It just means that your first thought came back, or another one that also creates frustration for you. What you need to do in those moments is just remember that nothing has gone wrong–it takes time to learn new habits.

The exercise for this week, the version that I’ve put in the podcast guide, includes space for you to reflect all week long on how you’re noticing and creating your new habit earlier and earlier in an interaction. Don’t assume that just because you’ve decided you want to show up in a different way, you’re going to switch over to it all at one.

So. My second story.

Unfortunately, a day or two later, I had a moment that didn’t go as well. I had put an agenda item on my manager’s staff meeting to ask for teams to volunteer for a project I’m helping pilot. And when the time came for my topic I launched into my request – forgetting to explain any of what the project was, what volunteer teams would actually be doing, and why it mattered. Whoops. I was really frustrated with myself. I know EXACTLY how to do a great job on that sort of pitch. But I had been busy the day before and busy that morning before work, and I hadn’t prepared. And then in the moment I relied on the action item notes I’d put in the meeting agenda instead of my experience in how to pitch projects to people.

I tried to resist the frustration I was feeling, but I fought a losing battle with it for the rest of the meeting. Instead of taking the moment to allow it like I had a few days before, I just tried to shove it away and deal with it later. I mean this was really important. My manager was watching me! And probably judging me! But instead, because I didn’t take the time to allow this emotion, it just kept punching me in the face every minute or two basically. Literally I could watch my head go down. There was frustration and shame in the same moment. It was a pretty terrible feeling I gotta tell ya! And you can guess that I did a pretty meh job leading the rest of that discussion.

So now that you’ve heard my comparison of why re-programming our brains from resisting frustration to allowing it is so important, and why in fact we have to start consciously allowing it in order to even have that re-programming start, I want to share with you my conversation with Lulu on how frustration shows up for HER at work.

Begin Guest Segment

Emily
Good evening. I am so excited to have Lulu here with me. Tell us a little bit about yourself. Who are you?

Lulu
Hi Emily. It’s so great to be here. I am a Product Lead at Pinterest. I work on our search product and I also am a leadership coach. I really enjoy working with women, especially women of color in tech. So that’s something that I do in addition to my day job.

Emily
Amazing. What do you love about leading?

Lulu
I think one of my favorite aspects of leading is also one of the reasons I love coaching, which is nurturing an individual’s strengths and working with them to get to that full potential.

Emily
How do you think about what someone’s strengths are?

Lulu
You know, some of it comes from your own direct observation of working with that individual. Some of it comes from conversations with their peers. Arguably the most important one is talking with them and getting to understand what they view as their own strengths and what they enjoy at work.

Emily
One of the pieces that I’ve learned is actually asking people where do you get frustrated with someone else? Because sometimes the places we get frustrated with someone else are the places we’re actually really good at. We just don’t give ourselves credit for being good at. We assume everyone else is or should be as good as we are. Right?

Lulu
Totally. Yeah. Yeah. It’s like why, why, why don’t they get this?

Emily
Right! It seems so on topic, I could not resist adding that extra little bit in. And so let’s talk about frustration. What’s your quick pitch? Why is it really important to be willing to feel frustration at work?

Lulu
So frustration is a super common emotion, which is why I think it’s especially important to pay attention to it. And I think if you’re someone who’s like, Oh I don’t really get frustrated that often. Or like, you know, I’m pretty Zen, you’re probably kidding yourself a little bit. I would encourage you to dig a little deeper if you self identify as that kind of a person. We all probably have moments of frustration throughout our day that we kind of just let them pass and wave them off or push them away. And it’s pretty easy to do this for a while. But I think over time if you consistently ignore that feeling, you’re also ignoring pretty valuable clues for how you can show up more effectively and perform more effectively at work because the frustration does have real costs and a real impact to your ability to be present and also the quality of your relationships with people.

Emily
Yeah. So what are some moments when you’ve noticed yourself experiencing frustration at work?

Lulu
So for me, a lot of these examples come in interpersonal interactions. And it can be pretty small, like if I catch on that the person I’m talking to is not really listening to me or paying attention. Another communication example as a product manager, one of the teams I talk with a lot is obviously engineers and sometimes I’ll be in a meeting and if an engineer is talking in very, very technical language for a long period of time, I can often feel a moment of frustration of like, Ugh, can we ground this back in the user problem? Like what is the summary here or the TLDR? This next one is a little bit darker, maybe, I don’t know if that’s the right word. But you know, as a woman there are definitely moments in my career when I can recall the feeling of being condescended to in a conversation. The core emotion there is actually anger in those situations, but definitely some frustration there as well.

Emily
So we have lots of different reactions to our emotions that feel kind of automatic. When you notice you’re feeling frustration, what’s your automatic response? How do you usually show up or act in that moment?

Lulu
My tendency is to kind of shut down and to withdraw. So if I notice that someone isn’t listening to me or they’re interrupting and talking over me or in the case of feeling like the language is super technical and I’m not really following, just tuning the person out is something I’ve definitely noticed myself doing. And so that includes in the meeting that happening and then if it ends up being a repeated pattern of behavior that I notice when I interact with someone, I’ve actually also then started to notice I will just start avoiding that person. Which, yeah, that definitely has an impact. When I’m my better self, I think there are some other more useful actions that I see myself taking. One thing that I found helpful is to paraphrase what I hear the other person saying. You know, if someone is using language that is technical or I’m just not following a certain train of thought, I will be like, “Okay, let me repeat back what I heard you say, is that accurate?” That’s a more constructive way to deal with that frustration that I’m feeling in that situation. The final thing is yeah, just actually being more comfortable with interrupting the other person. Again, depending on who it is, this can be useful or not. Being able to identify kind of a moment when you’re starting to recognize that you’re tuning out and then being able to just insert and divert the conversation. It takes some practice, but I think over time that can be really powerful too.

Emily
So you mentioned sometimes going so far as to avoid someone if you’ve felt frustration around them repeatedly. I think that’s a great lead in to, why is it a problem as a leader when you’re not willing to feel frustration?

Lulu
Sure. So I mean, yeah, just to take that example, you know, there’s some relationships at work where it’s a bit more flexible in terms of how much you engage or choose to engage with specific people. But obviously if you’re coming up against this emotion with someone who you have to work with on a day-to-day basis, that’s just not really tenable, right? You need to figure out a way to talk about and address that feeling with the other person in a constructive way. I think, and this isn’t just specific to frustration, but I think any negative emotion that we suppress or don’t bring up to the surface, there are few things that can definitely negatively fall out of that. The most important is that you’re not as effective in those relationships as you could be, right? When I tuned someone out or when I avoid them by changing our one-on-ones from like weekly to biweekly, ultimately that doesn’t help the team get stronger and be more effective. And I’m both depriving my coworkers of feedback that could potentially help them grow, give them information or self awareness that they didn’t have about themselves. I’m also not practicing my own ability and pushing my own ability to grow and have uncomfortable conversations because let’s face it, giving constructive feedback is really hard. And articulating hard emotions is hard, especially at work. And so it makes all the sense in the world why we’d rather be an ostrich, put our head in the sand sometimes about this stuff. Once you’re at the stage of your career where you’re leading teams, you just don’t want to set that example for other people on your team. It’s inevitable that we’re going to run into people that we have tension with or situations that are exasperating. But you need to build the muscle to be able to engage with those moments. And so setting that example for your team I think is also really important.

Emily
Absolutely. I think each of our brains chooses a set of emotions that it considers to be “not acceptable” and another set that it considers to be “not safe”, just kind of slightly different variant, but that a lot of those are socialized. If you come from a house where people just don’t feel anger…like, I came from a household where I didn’t really see anger exhibited very often, and I know one of my parents responded really negatively whenever they saw someone around them exhibiting it, and so for me, I’m super uncomfortable when I watch people around me be angry. But I’m also really uncomfortable when I notice I’m angry because there’s something in my head that’s just like, “Oh, that’s unsafe. That’s a problem.”

Lulu
Yeah, that really resonates.

Emily
I love that you touch on one of the most important things about us being willing to feel all of our emotions is that we’re not creating an environment for our team members where certain emotions are implicitly unacceptable.

Lulu
Totally. Yeah. It took me a while to realize how sensitive people are to the emotional undercurrent in a meeting over the long-term, kind of the emotional undercurrent and moral on a team.

Emily
What did you notice that led you to become aware of that?

Lulu
I have a pretty distinct memory of this. This was a couple of years ago now–I was leaving a meeting with my team and I thought I was just my normal self and I’ve actually forgotten what it was that day that was affecting me but it must’ve been something because after the meeting I actually had one of the engineer’s Slack me to be like, “Hey Lulu, is everything okay? I felt like you were like a little bit down earlier.” And I was like, Oh my God. It was one of those light bulb moments of like, Oh, okay. Clearly there’s just so much being said in your body language and taking the time to really check in with yourself and be present to what is there for you then puts you in a position of control and power to then decide how do you respond to whatever it is that you’re feeling, right? Like, is now the right time to deal with this? Or like, do I kind of need to set this aside for a little bit? But at least whatever happens, you’re making a conscious intentional choice, not letting your emotions influence you without you even recognizing that that’s what’s happening.

Emily
How do you gain that awareness?

Lulu
The honest answer is a lot of therapy, haha. Therapy definitely helps. Working with a coach. And I know, I know people listening might be like Oh, they’re so biased.

Emily
Yeah, but the reason I do this is because the principles I learned while working with each of the coaches that I’ve worked with and training as one, have completely changed my life and how much I love it and how I show up in it. I wouldn’t want to do something I didn’t love and believe in wholeheartedly.

Lulu
I know most of your listeners probably don’t know me, but I am not one of those people that can sell something that I don’t believe in. Working with a coach or someone who is relatively more objective who can give you some feedback on how you’re showing up. I think it is often helpful. Things like meditation, or anything that brings you more into your body and out of your head is really helpful. I did a meditation retreat a couple years ago and a lot of interesting things came from that experience, but a couple of things that feel really pertinent here are–we talk about like the mind body connection a lot, but I think it’s one thing to intellectually understand that and it’s another thing to viscerally feel that. Something that one of the teachers said during that retreat, which has stuck with me ever since, was every single emotion that we experience and every sensory input has a corresponding physical reaction in our bodies. If you can’t feel it, it’s because you haven’t tuned your awareness to be able to recognize that that’s, that something is happening. That was like pretty mind blowing when I first just sat there and thought about it for a while. I was like, Whoa.

Yeah. And the more that you pay attention to that, the more like you realize that that’s true. And so a couple of years ago I wouldn’t be able to tell you that when I get stressed or worried, I feel it a lot in like my stomach and my neck. I hold a lot in that tension and that’s something that over time I’ve started to be able to develop and just have more sensitivity to. Our bodies are really important. They give us really important clues to how we’re feeling. I think as people who work at our computers all day, it can be hard to access that connection with our bodies but I think it’s super important.

Emily
I think we spend a lot of our day ignoring that they don’t feel great in this chair and we kind of want to use the bathroom, but we can’t leave this room or I’m a little bit thirsty, but I can’t get water. Yeah, spending a lot of time trying to shut them down and ignore them. So what does frustration feel like for you in your body?

Lulu
So I feel it in my stomach and I feel it in a tensing of my neck and shoulders. More immediately, in the moment it’s actually probably a tensing of my neck and shoulders. Listeners can’t see it, but I’m twisting my neck up and down right now. And then in the moment in the meeting, if there was a third person in there observing what was happening in the meeting, you could probably actually pretty clearly see. I might start looking down, looking away from the person, not making eye contact anymore. This is all the signs of kind of checking out.

Emily
So one of the things we can do when we notice we’re feeling an emotion is we can dig in deeper on that experience and ramp up the frustration and stew in how terrible this person is and how they shouldn’t be condescending or they should be mindful of the fact that this is not the place to discuss our architecture choices or whatever it is. OR we can spend that time thinking about how we shouldn’t feel frustration and there’s something wrong and bad and we shouldn’t have to feel this or it’s not okay to feel it. Or we can just say, Oh look, that was frustration. And then let it go. And I think for the first two we continue to pour our energy into it and make that the experience that we’re being present with in that moment. And for the third we get the option to just notice it happened, but not continue to invest in it. I’m curious, you’ve talked a little bit about making that decision for yourself. How do you transition from the stewing or the I shouldn’t have to into, Oh this is what happened and now I can figure out how to regain being present in this meeting or in this experience, whatever it happens to be.

Lulu
It’s a really great question. It’s funny because when I was listening to you describe those three options, I was like, Oh, I’m having a hard time identifying with the just stewing in it or letting it grow because my instinct is to just suppress it and then also ignore the cause of it. Just like, go away, go away. But actually, now that I think about it more, I do have that reaction, I do hold on. I let that experience or frustration in the moment then color my perception of that individual. In those times when I start to avoid someone, that’s clearly me hanging on to some resentment that I have. Cause that meeting is no longer happening. That’s me not living in a current reality. That’s me living in a past story.

Emily
You’re choosing to think about it and there’s no reason for that.

Lulu
Right, right. And that’s a pretty disempowered position to be in, right? Like if I’m going around like wanting to avoid someone at work, the person that I’m making the most miserable is myself, right? So yeah, I think that there’s real power in being able to recognize, okay, I’m frustrated. Then that brings you into that present moment, that meeting, and then you can make a choice. Do I actually interject right now and is this an appropriate time to bring up this feeling or do I set this aside and then set up a followup conversation with this person to chat about what’s happening? Again, I think it goes back to then putting yourself back in the driver’s seat of what you want to do instead of just kind of going down the automatic worn groove that our brains have developed about like, frustration, ah, shut down. Okay. Turn off.

Emily
What is that reprogramming experience like for you?

Lulu
I feel like it’s one of those things where in real time or in the moment I don’t feel like I ever have a realization of, Oh, I am retraining my brain. It’s just one of those things where I feel like you go from feeling like, Oh, I have this one automatic reaction. And then at some point you’re like, Oh, I’m no longer–I don’t necessarily notice it happening in the moment as it’s happening. And it’s more of just like over a longer period of time, I look back and I realize, Oh, I’ve made some improvement in my ability to confront difficult emotions.

Emily
How do you recognize that?

Lulu
Again, I think it comes back to those moments of presence and feeling like you’re making a conscious choice. Like, Ooh, this is uncomfortable right now. Am I going to address it? Am I going to react and blow up? Am I going to shut down? And then again being like, okay, I’m picking option B right now. I think the first step is starting to get to a place where you’re like, Oh, I’m at a fork in the road. And then maybe the first 10 times you get to that fork in the road, you take the option that you’ve been doing for the past 30 years. Right? But you recognize there’s a fork in the road! Before you didn’t even realize there was a fork in the road. You just assumed that this was the only way. So then you go from like, Oh, there, there are options. I have options here. And then the next step is like, okay, what is the most productive option to choose? Or what is the option that will be the most beneficial to me and the person that I’m engaging with in this particular situation?

Emily
I love that question. So when you’re asking yourself that, what are some of the helpful answers you come up with?

Lulu
I think some of the things that are helpful considerations when you’re trying to answer this question of what would be most beneficial for me and this other person to make this more concrete. So let’s say, yeah, you’re having a one-on-one, you’re feeling frustration, the options in front of you are shut down. A second option would be to deliver the feedback right there in the moment to the person. Option three would be to deliver the feedback leader, right? Simplistic example, but let’s say that those are the three options. And so in figuring out what is the best thing to do and again, probably you’ve probably gathered that the first option of shutting down is not the one that we would not the one that we would advocate for. It’s not the one that leads to kind of growth and a more productive relationship. So between giving feedback in the moment or giving feedback later, a number of factors come into play here, right? Like the level of pre-established trust that exists between you and this person. Is this someone you’ve just met or is this someone that you have a pretty good relationship with? Was this the first time that you felt this way? Or is it the 10th time? Do you have 10 other things you need to get to in the agenda or are you in a relatively leisurely pace? So a lot of this is actually pretty common sense. In the past my experience has been that, largely, especially if the feedback is constructive, most people probably benefit from taking some time and getting their thoughts together and then having a separate conversation just about that feedback. It takes a good amount of skill to be able to do it in the moment. And a lot of it, I think, does heavily depend on just the level of trust. And also, to be honest, the power dynamics between two people, especially at work, that definitely influences how feedback is received. So those are all things to consider.

Emily
For me, one of the ways I decide as well is if I still feel like I’m falling into that frustration mode really easily. Delivering feedback from a place of frustration is not going to have the same experience for me, the same experience, as delivering feedback from a different emotion like love. Which is an option if I give myself that space to think about it.

Lulu
Yeah, that’s a great point. That’s a really great point.

Emily
And if I do it in the moment, often it would be from frustration towards them and judgment towards me for feeling that frustration, not being better about it. And if I do it later, I can do that from love towards me and curiosity towards them or something that just seems far more effective.

Lulu
Yes. And the only other thing that just popped into my head is, I think the most important thing with waiting until you’re in a better state to deliver the feedback is that ultimately the most important thing is that you do deliver it. Cause I think the other thing that ends up happening to me for sure is that I’m like, Oh yeah, I’ll talk to this person about that later. But then you know, again, just given how hard these conversations are and how busy everyone is, sometimes “I’ll have that conversation later” turns into just an exercise in procrastination.

Emily
So what are the one or two beliefs or sentences that let you show up and give someone that feedback instead of shutting down and acting from frustration?

Lulu
I think the guiding belief has to be that your happiness at work and the impact that you have at work is ultimately a function of your relationships. If that is one of your North stars, then it kind of falls from that that anything that is getting in the way of you effectively relating to other people is something that’s standing in the way of you being happier at work and also you having the most impact that you can have. So I think that’s probably the most important thing. And then for me personally, I think this next one might vary, but I am definitely a big proponent of personal development and self-growth and I’m sure you and a lot of your listeners are too. And so for me, as much as having difficult feedback conversations like makes me like, Uugh, it’s also something that I know–every conversation I feel like you walk away learning so much about you, about the other person, about how these conversations can go better. And the positive impact of getting better at this is just, it makes such a big difference. So that proof in my own lived experience is honestly all the motivation that I need to continue getting into the messiness of emotions.

Emily
Yeah. When I avoid or disengage with everything that I feel a negative emotion about or I feel something I don’t want to feel, my day gets so slow because I spend all this time trying to very carefully avoid things and very carefully structure it. It’s so inefficient!

Lulu
Yes. There’s definitely an efficiency argument to be made as well.

Emily
And then I create busy and overwhelmed and tired, which also feels terrible!

Lulu
Yeah! Cascading negative feedback loop.

Emily
Yeah, absolutely. So as we’re wrapping up, what are your tips for listeners about using this emotion to be an even better leader?

Lulu
I think frustration is like many of our other negative emotions. It’s an important wayfinder for us. It tells us what we value. It tells us what we care about. And I think paying attention to it can be a really powerful way of understanding yourself, what makes you tick. And again, because it’s a relatively more common negative emotion, I’m assuming for most people, than something like anger, there’s just more opportunities to practice your response to frustration in any given moment. And so like with any other skill getting better at managing your emotions is something that takes practice. And so from that lens, you can view frustration as a blessing.

Emily
Yes, exactly. I love that way of viewing it. Thank you so much. This has been so much fun.

Lulu
Thank you, Emily. Yeah, I’ve really enjoyed this. Thank you so much for having me on.

End Guest Segment

Emily
Alright, thank you Lulu!

So here’s your exercise for this week’s Growth time. That 10 minutes a day on your work calendar that you’ve blocked off for practicing the critical emotional skills that are going to make you MUCH happier and more productive at work.

We’re going to walk through it aloud right now. And then there’s a printed version in the Podcast Guide, just like always, including printable sheets with the instructions and model skeletons that you can fill out every day. I’ve also added my models for the examples I gave earlier during this episode, because I think it’s much easier to understand them in writing than by listening, especially as you’re getting started with the self-coaching model. I’ll give instructions for grabbing that at the end of the episode, but also just remember it’s always linked from the show notes.

What is a situation you felt frustrated in today? Why did you feel frustrated?

Alright, now take that whole big story you were just starting to tell and condense it down into ONE phrase. Not a full run-on sentence, just one simple phrase. What was the set of a handful of words that were going through your brain that caused the feeling of frustration for you?

And now, when you were thinking that thought, and you were feeling frustrated, how did you show up? What were the specific actions you took from a feeling of frustration?

And when you acted that way, what result did you create for yourself?

So for me, in my first example above, I’d had this original thought that “now this project will take me more time from my already busy day.” I know. Sometimes, my thoughts? Not super grammatical. It’s okay! Yours don’t have to be either by the way. And the result that I noticed, is that as I was thinking that way and I was checking out of the meeting, it actually meant I wasn’t participating in conversations that I wanted to be part of. And I was going to have to go back and read the notes and figure out what everyone had said and figure out if there were things I wanted to weigh in on after the fact and update the document and make suggestions through Google docs. And in fact that was going to take a lot of extra time too. So I was really CREATING the thing that I was worried about for myself through that worry. You will notice that this is a theme as you do models.

In a few weeks, we’ll talk about how we usually have several models going on in our head at once and how to pull them apart. For right now, just be suspicious if your Actions or your Results were positive. Frustration is not an emotion that creates positive Actions and it’s not an emotion that creates positive Results. Ask yourself if those things are really what you do when frustration is in the driver’s seat.

Alright, and now I want you to answer, how did you respond to feeling that frustration? Did you react to it? Did you roll your eyes and sigh? Did you resist it? Did you clamp down your body or your brain? Did you think about how you shouldn’t have to feel this? How the other person was wrong? Did you avoid it? Like, grab a snack, or pull out your notepad and think about something else?

Or did you allow it? Just be present with that frustration in your body for a few seconds, let it flow through you, and then get back to your regularly scheduled whatever-it-was-you-were-doing?

How do you KNOW that’s the response that you used? Now when you fill out this exercise for yourself over the next week, I want you to spend some time on this question. How do you KNOW that’s the response that you used? Because the better bank that you can build up for yourself about what each of those four responses (React, Resist, Avoid, Allow) looks like for you–looks like for you in general, maybe looks like for you for specific emotions–the better you’ll get at noticing which response you’re using. And noticing if you want to change your response or so you can be really proud when you’re allowing the emotion like you intended to.

Alright, then next step you’re going to do is decide how you WANT to act or feel in situations like this in the future, and you’re going to create a model for that response. You want to flesh it all the way out, and understand exactly what that will look like. Remember our Big Results Formula, and how we’ve talked about how creating a clear vision matters? Well this is a tiny replication of that. Creating a clear vision makes it so much easier to show up the way you want to.

So, real quick, one or two sentences or just a one-word feeling, how do you want to act or feel in situations like this in the future?

And finally, what will it be like to allow the emotion of frustration to be in your body briefly? So that you can pass through it, to the model and the thought you want instead. Describe that experience in detail for yourself. For right now, just come up with: what are the first two things you’ll notice while you’re allowing this emotion, frustration, to be in your body without trying to shove it away?

Frustration is also an interesting emotion for this exercise for me at least, because the emotion of frustration shows up very similarly to what resistance feels like. For me, resistance is where I just TENSE the bottom of my chest. It’s like I’m holding myself rigid against something. And frustration, I tend to do the same kind of tensing, but up in my collarbones and the front of my shoulders. So really dig in there and get curious about the difference between what resistance looks like for you in your body, versus what allowing and the base feeling of frustration looks like. I think you’ll notice what me and basically everybody else does, which is that resistance feels worse than any of the emotions on their own! And we rarely feel resistance on its own, so generally we feel resistance plus frustration, resistance plus anger, resistance plus grief. And that’s terrible. Grief on its own is so much more pleasant, it’s like a third of how bad it is when you feel grief plus resistance. So really dig in and get curious.

So you’re creating two models today and I know most of you aren’t super experienced with it yet. So if you run out of time that’s just fine. Honor your calendar and keep your daily growth time to 10 minutes. Just come back the next day to where you left off with this situation instead of choosing a new situation to explore.

Make sure you grab the Podcast Guide, which includes a written version of this week’s exercise and my models from the examples I’ve used in today’s episode. It’s linked from the shownotes or you can get it in your email really easily right now from your phone, by texting the word FRUSTRATED to 44222. And if you want a reminder of how to use the self-coaching model, I’m putting a direct link to Episode 5 in the full shownotes as well.

Have an amazing week. Make sure you’re taking time throughout your day to ask yourself how you’re feeling and what your unconscious response to that emotion is right now. Notice as it starts to be more comfortable foryou to allow your emotions the more you practice that process. And I’ll see you next week!

If you loved this episode and want to dive deeper into improving your own emotional health so you can feel better and have bigger results at work, you have to join me for a one-on-one call. We’ll talk about where you are, where you want to be, and create a solid plan to get from here to there. Just visit go.exceptional.vision/call.