Intro: 00:00

Welcome to the Infinitely Precious podcast produced by Infinitely Precious LLC. Your host is James Henry. Remember, you are infinitely precious and unconditionally loved for the gift you already are.

James: 00:12

Hello, beloved. It's good to be with you again and to share some thoughts. Today, I wanted to talk to you a little bit about frustration. As you all probably gather, most of the topics that I talk about are topics that arise in my own life. They are some of my own challenges come to life.

James: 00:37

And so I share some thoughts about some ways to deal with the challenges that arise, or provide a word of encouragement so you are not unwound by the very, thing that you have the ability to overcome. So today, I thought I would talk a little bit about frustration. It arises a little bit in my life, particularly when there are episodes or incidents in my life that I imagined I had some control over, only to discover, no, I didn't have any control over them. I, I only imagined I had control. It was the illusion.

James: 01:28

And in those instances, I set myself up for frustration. Now bear with me for a moment. Most of us note a cause of our frustration. I am frustrated with. And oftentimes that with is the name of a person or a particular issue in our lives.

James: 01:53

And the frustration often comes because that, person or incident is not conforming to what I perceive to be the way it ought to be. So I, I find myself frustrated. And that frustration kind of wells up in me, and I can feel it. It tightens in my stomach. I can feel the frustration lead to things like anger, and, it it affects my mood.

James: 02:30

It affects my mood when I am frustrated. The case in point in this particular instance is my dog. And she taught me this beautiful lesson recently. Here is, I work from my house. I work from home.

James: 02:51

I have an office here at the house. Don't have an office in the building, where I work, so here I am. And my dog is is old. Reedy is not a young dog. She is, 14a half.

James: 03:09

She's been around quite a while. And in the last 6 months, she's lost her hearing, so she can't hear me. She can't hear what the tone of my voice is. She relies completely on, hand gestures and commands. She understands pointing, so she knows a direction to go in.

James: 03:33

But even when she goes in the backyard and she's sitting there, and she doesn't know you've opened the door to let her in, so you have to go out and tap her on the shoulder. None of that frustrates me. But one of the things that I've helped her do over her lifetime is help her overcome some of the things that she was very frightened of when she first came to us. She had not had a good life. So, using gentle words and rewards, I helped her overcome, for instance, her fear of the crinkling sound of plastic bottles.

James: 04:05

I don't know what caused the crinkling sound or to be a fear. I don't know what loud noises caused to be a fear, but it was clearly something that affected her. I helped her get over those things by crinkle a little bit, pet her, speak to her gently, offer a treat. Eventually, just pet her gently, speak to her gently, crinkle a little bit more. Eventually, the crinkling sound of a plastic bottle was an invitation for Riddie to come to me.

James: 04:33

She she thought I was inviting her to come. She thought it was an invitation to come. Wasn't afraid at all anymore. So fast forward to now, she's 14a half. She can't hear me.

James: 04:43

She can't hear the tone of my voice. And I've been trying to help her, transition. I have a separate heating source here in my office, so it's warmer in here than it is in the rest of the house. So when she goes outside and she comes back in, I close the door to my office, and she can sit in here with me. Only she frets about sitting in the office with me.

James: 05:04

It is not a, it's not something that she easily overcomes. And you can tell she she eventually sits down and makes a huffy breath. But she makes kind of whining noises a little bit. I tried petting her. I tried to encourage her.

James: 05:17

But if I pet her, then she thinks I'm gonna get up and open the door for her. Finally, it came to a head on Saturday, and I just realized, you know, she wanted to go out, put her outside. She came back in. She wanted to go back in the rest of the house. Put her in the rest of the house.

James: 05:31

She pushed open my door and came back in, wanted to go outside. Put her outside. I was then doing something in my office, so when I let her back in, I let her in and then I sat down in my chair. She fretted. I became frustrated.

James: 05:44

I felt it. It was rising in me. It was rising in me. So I have to tell a difference. I have to look at the story that I was telling myself about reading.

James: 05:54

She wasn't she doesn't do these things to bring frustration into my life. My expectation that I can do the same thing with her, that I could be when she could hear, when she could see better, and when she was younger and was more flexible. The things expecting her to be the same dog 14a half years ago is like expecting me to be the same person I was when I was 18. I'm thankful that I'm not the same person I was when I was 18. And I'm quite frankly, Reedy is calmer.

James: 06:29

She doesn't think she's a puppy anymore. Sometimes she does. But so I set myself up for frustration. The way I wrote about it in my journal on Saturday and have reflected on it is I am the author of my own frustration. There are some things that happen in life I can do absolutely nothing about, and so getting frustrated about them doesn't make any difference to me or to anybody else who, who might be affected by the same thing.

James: 07:03

I have to decide for myself what are the things I can make a difference about and the things that I can't. It took a long time, the last 2 or 3 months probably, to realize Reedy just was not going to adapt to sitting in my office with me. No matter how warm it was, no matter how kind my words, even with treats, she did not care to be in here with me. And trying to enforce that was frustrating her and frustrating me. So I resolved then and there.

James: 07:39

But look at this a new new way. Step back for just a second. Reframe this thing that's going on. And ask myself, what can I really do in this situation? I am not, no matter how many times I try, probably gonna ever convince Reedy it's perfectly alright to remedy my office But I can open the door.

James: 08:03

It might take a few extra steps. I can open the door, and let her go to where she wants to go. And therefore, she won't fret. She gets bored more, so she'll come back through the door more often. But the truth is, continuing to expect a different response, is what led to to my frustration.

James: 08:29

I suspect in your life, you find that some of the things you're frustrated with are things that maybe anyone would be, that the world is frustrated with. We see things, injustice and other kinds of things. And about those things, we are called to act, to make a difference. But sometimes the little things that frustrate us in life, how fast the person in front of us in the car is going in the in the car in front of us is going, or, how many lights we catch on our way to wherever it is we're going. Those kinds of things are outside of our control.

James: 09:05

So getting frustrated about them changes nothing except how we're feeling in the space we're in. And I'm here to say that maybe we don't have to get sucked into frustration. That instead of being sucked into the frustration, we can step back for a moment when we find ourselves frustrated and ask what is it possible for me to do that could change the situation? And if there isn't anything, there really isn't any point in getting stirred up by it. In fact, it might be, negative for the next person that encounters me because now I'm frustrated about something I had nothing to get no control over.

James: 09:49

And this person who's getting to experience my frustration because there was nothing I could do about it in the car, but now I'm with this other person and I'm agitated so I may not be as patient or as kind as I could have been. That person is now bearing the brunt of my own, struggles, my own frustration. To truly be kind and loving, to truly live into this idea that I am infinitely precious and unconditionally loved for the gift I am, and so are you, and so is everyone I'll meet, and quite frankly so is everything in the universe. Infinitely precious unconditionally loved for the gift it or they or we are. And if I'm going to live into that perhaps being careful to note when I get frustrated, what is the source of that frustration?

James: 10:46

Am I once again the author of my frustration by having unrealistic expectations of what is happening? If I have realistic expectations and they're not happening and I'm frustrated, then maybe there's something I could do. If I have unrealistic expectations, like I did for Reedy, then maybe what I'm invited to do is to step back, catch my breath, and try something else to go another way, to give it another shot just in a different direction. That's that's what I think. That's what I discovered this week, that oftentimes the frustration with which I live is as of my own doing.

James: 11:40

I get to choose not to feel frustrated about things I can't control because there's nothing I can do. And The things I can control, perhaps I need to do something different because those things, are not gonna change if I just keep doing the same thing. Just a thought for this week. I wish you all the best. Remember, you are infinitely precious and unconditionally loved for the gift you already are.

James: 12:06

Until the next time.