How do you feel when circumstances seem to conspire against you? Do you feel like one thing after another starts to go wrong and feel frustrated and angry? That is the normal reaction of most people and understandably so. It is a human reaction to feel anger and fearful sometimes together at the same time. Why is this so? When unexpected circumstances fall upon us, we are usually unprepared, and the task of resolving these affairs means that we have to undergo additional demands on ourselves. Sometimes the demands are physical. For example, if a member of your family has a hospital operation scheduled, you have to accompany them there. That is a physical demand. But such demands can also be mental, such as if you have to accompany them there and are unable to do so because you had an important job interview scheduled in that day and cancelling that now makes you untrustworthy before you’ve even spoken to the interviewer. Or if it is logistically impossible because you had planned to take your daughter out to celebrate her birthday, and she will more be disappointed – demands of balancing such as that can cause a certain level of frustration.
And what can you do if you are frustrated? You can try to just destress and unwind by not thinking too much of the situation. Thinking only burns up unnecessary mental energy that you could use towards resolution, rather than in situ. And usually the solutions we take are limited by the amount of energy we have so it might be better to save your energy and invest it in rest, so that you have as much energy to direct towards the resolution.