Frustration, a Valuable Trigger to Stay Focused

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For years I have lived with the conviction that frustration should be prevented. Somewhere during my journey I started believing that frustration was a bad thing. I even had a theology to support this. Recently, about 12 months ago I started to pay attention as to why I would get frustrated and then resist to use it as an input to adjust my feelings. I totally agree with the concept that feelings are not telling me the truth, but the emotions behind them are real and are trying to tell me something.

You probably are familiar with the ‘fight-or-flight-reaction’ concept within psychology. It is a protection mechanism of our unconscious or subconscious mind. I learned that it has to do with the production of norepinephrine, a type of hormone, which greatly effects your emotions. It is a valuable hormone, it gets you out of bed in the morning and makes you alert. Stress and worry greatly increases the production of it which prepares you to act quickly, respond and deal with any given situation.

Well I’m not a subject matter expert in neuroscience but I understand this emotion is connected to our sense of frustration. So how can we position this ‘fight-or-flight-reaction’ triggered by frustration?

Paul encouraged Timothy to flee from everything that distracted him from his calling. He urged him to take hold of his destiny and fight for everything he received faith for in the sight of God who gives life to everything .. that being his own life, calling, destiny and faith.

“Fight the good fight of faith; take hold of the eternal life to which you were called, and you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses” – 1 Timothy 6:12

In other words Paul said to Timothy to stay focused at his God given assignment and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness in doing his job.

I started to look closer at the reasons of my frustrations. All valid, all needed attention by someone skilled for the job. Was this person me? My conscience spoke many times, suggesting it should be me. I decided to pray and ask the Holy Spirit to guide me through my prophetic words, to refresh them, to speak new ones through others and to give me confirmation about these situations, ultimately knowing if they could be dealt with within my calling and within the area I received faith for or not.

He started teaching me about staying focused on my calling, my destiny, even when this meant not contributing to doing ‘good things’ as they would only distract me from doing the ‘right things’. He challenged me to be no longer frustrated (fight) about things, which I was not called to do, and refocus (flight) at my God given assignment.

The challenge for all of us is to stay focused on what God has called us to personally do. This means we ‘fight’ for what we have received faith for and we ‘flight’ from what would distract us from our destiny.

We have to be obedient to what God has assigned us to do even when this means people don’t understand us.

Take hold of your destiny!

AV

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Arjan Visser is an experienced catalyst of change, a creative thinker and entrepreneur who is passionate about problem solving. He strongly believes that the first step to ‘transformation of the marketplace’ is to unlock the creativity in individuals and organizations. As a business revivalist, he has consulted for a wide range of clients across the world, including the government of Canada, Dutch Defense, ADW Agro, SAP AG, faith-based organizations and sporting associations.

Arjan and his wife, Sascha, have been married for more than 20 years. Their purpose in life is to help millions of people to believe in and utilize their God given abilities to influence leaders of businesses and nations and to provide them with the environment and resources to gain the confidence, certainty and personal power to achieve their life’s purpose and goals.

Together they run a series of start-ups in which they aim to transform businesses, government and education. Their time is spent enabling them to experience freedom in creativity and identity using tools like the business model innovation and LEGO® Serious Play®.

They are raising three young ‘world changer’ sons at home, nearby Maastricht in The Netherlands and are thrilled to be part of the Anothen journey.