Frustration is a feeling or emotion arising from an obstruction of a goal, usually because of reasons that are unknown, unusual, or appear to be more than mere coincidence or otherwise unreasonable. An example might be trying to get to work on time but your 20 minute commute takes 35 minutes even though you do not see any accidents, road work, or first responder activity. It can also build over time; an example may be that the work you do appears to be undermined or otherwise reduced or thwarted day-in and day-out. We sometimes say "one step forward, two steps back". Another example is that you swim and swim only to find that the tide or current has taken you farther away from your goal even with all that hard work. Frustration comes from the realization that what you expected has not come to fruition usually in some unreasonable way. Yet another example might be a baseball player who consistently has a batting average of .350 going hitless three games in a row, even though his lifetime average against those three pitchers was .350 before those three games.

We should use frustration as a tool, it should be a neutral indicator that we don't have perfect information and that our brains (unconsciously through frustration) are signaling us to look deeper. Our long commute could've been caused by a prior accident that was cleared up before we got there and now we are just dealing with the traffic jam slowly clearing out. Our work may appear undermined or reduced because in reality our workload and backlog truly have increased and we have hit 100% utilization. The swimmer may not be aware that a large storm passed by offshore last night and a terrible rip current is still running by the coast. The baseball player may be suffering from an asymptomatic case of the flu or inner-ear infection which he is unaware of but it's affecting his balance or reflexes just slightly. So, always ask: what is the lesson to be learned from my frustration.

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