The more we can simplify and lighten our lives, the better.

There’s no reason to make things any harder than they already are. In the otherwise oppressive and absurd circus known as human life, we do ourselves a great service when we unclench our fists and actually enjoy the ride.

But just as our effort to make everything lighter is a form of enlightenment, our insistence on things being easy is a form of immaturity.

We can and should be satisfied with our past success, but not to the point that we consider further effort unnecessary. Situations are going to be difficult and vexing for us, and we will always need a sufficient amount of patience to achieve our goals.

Without it, we’ll beat ourselves up and out of the game entirely.

Ellis’s research on rational emotive behavioral therapy coined a great term called low frustration tolerance. It’s not the wish to not be frustrated, he says, but the demand that we should not be frustrated. The feeling that our reality should be as wished, and that any frustration should be resolved quickly and easily.

Here are several of the characteristic of low frustration. See if they remind you anybody in your life, including you.

*Existing conditions must be changed to give you what you like, otherwise you can’t stand it and you can’t be happy at all.

*You must have immediate gratification, or else your life is awful.

*When you see people who are creating frustration for you, feelings of hostility arise.

*Once you become frustrated, you get frustrated because you’re frustrated.

Any of those sound familiar?

Of course. We’re all guilty of these tendencies, myself included.

Reminds me of being a kid, when the waitress wouldn’t fill up my water glass at a restaurant. My instinct wasn’t to patiently wait until she walked by my table and then politely request service, but to get up from my chair, march over to the busser station and fill up the damn glass myself.

That’s how entitled I used to be, and frankly, still can be.

But as the aforementioned psychologist reminds us, frustration is a normal and part of the human condition. We all get thwarted in pursuit of standard human goals, whether it’s getting a promotion, getting to the movie on time, or just getting a glass of water.

And if we want a real shot at true fulfillment, let’s not fall for the illusion that we somehow deserve things to come to us easily.

One helpful starting place for raising our frustration tolerance is to remove extreme, catastrophizing, demanding language from our vocabulary.

Noticing anytime that we says words like always, never, should and must, anytime we get less of what we want.

These moments will ring like bells of awareness, and over time, help us raise our ability to tolerate life’s frustrating moments. It’s a slow process without quick gratification, but it pays dividends in the long term.

Soon, frustrations will make stretch, but not snap. We’ll confront obstacles with flexibility and patience, not an aggressive and entitled reaction.

And as we consciously train ourselves to withstand our daily vexations, the lighter life will feel.

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
Are you not getting to where you want to go because you don’t know how to do life the hard way?

Why do we think we have to pressure ourselves like this?

Why do we think more is always better?

Because we have been brainwashed by a consumer culture that sold us wrong values, that’s why.

Governments, religions, businesses, media companies, corporate behemoths, they all have a hidden agenda to keep humanity small, scared, stupid and dreamless. It’s simply not in their best interest.

A population capable of critical thinking? A society where ignorance is unforgivable offense? Not in this century.

No wonder our culture completely lacks any honest messages about what it really means to be a healthy human being.

Look around. Anyone who meets proper guidelines for activities like screen time, sleep and exercise is practically viewed as a psychopath.

What do you mean you don’t watch television? The hell is wrong with you?

My startup’s performance review template has a category for team dynamics. And in the column to the far right, meaning, the most senior level, one of the traits reads as follows:

Helps the company develop new healthy norms.

This is critical in any organization. For example, think about a team member who never takes breaks all day, consistently eats lunch at their desk while answering emails between bites and stays in the office way past closing time every night of the week.

Their behavior might help the client improve five percent, and it might help increase their salary ten percent, but their overall wellbeing will go down fifty percent.

The economics doesn’t back out. It’s simply not good for individual or the organization.

Hence, the leadership skill of developing new healthy norms. And not necessarily starting a corporate fitness regimen or cooking office snacks with organic foods.

But healthy meaning, doing business in a way that’s not driven by anything unwholesome.

*Setting boundaries for ourselves and also respecting the limits of others.

*Accepting our differences and forgiving each other for being human.

*Bringing quality energy to the workplace and positively infecting the people around us.

*Giving people emotional nourishment through acknowledgement and compassion.

All of these are healthy norms, and anyone can be proactive in modeling them. The only problem is, schools aren’t exactly incentivized to teach these skills in their curriculum.

Colleges are very large, highly funded institutions whose sole purpose is to teach children how to sit in straight rows and obey instructions.

Carlin famously called schools the indoctrination centers where children are sent to be stripped of their individuality and turned into obedient, soul dead conformist members of the consumer culture.

And so, if we have any intention of elevated the collective wellbeing of our organizations, we have to be willing to initiative, and we have to be willing to take shit for taking initiative.

Remember, being a healthy person is valuable, but helping other people in the organization develop new healthy norms is priceless.

Do both and everybody wins. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
Do accept your need to take special measures to protect your health?

The key to giving feedback is empathy.

When somebody trusts us enough to ask for our input on something, we can’t simply jump right in and start correcting their spelling errors and ripping apart their design.

We should begin with the acknowledgment that they’re taking a risk. Since they’re being vulnerable, opening their work to criticism, the opportunity to even give feedback in the first place is a privilege.

We also have to honor their whole person by stepping into their shoes and understanding what prompted the need for help in the first place. Because nobody asks for feedback for fun.

My standard response to those who ask for my help typically goes something like this.

Congrats on finishing this! Thanks for asking me, and I’d be delighted to check it out. What kind of feedback would be most useful to you?

It’s the last piece that’s important. Because everyone is looking for something different.

Some people simply want permission, validation and encouragement for their work, like knowing that they’re not crazy and on the right track.

Some people have a very specific goal in mind they’re trying to achieve, like design parity, copy strength or strategic direction.

Some people aren’t quite sure what they’re looking for, so they need someone to help them tease out their true needs.

Point being, there are as many ways to give help as there are people to give it to. But whatever their underlying motivation for sharing with you, part of your job as a leader is to figure that motivation out and use it as a framing device going forward.

Reminds me of something one of my therapist friends used to ask clients before they began sessions:

How do you want to be listened to today?

It sounds a bit corny, and people’s answers weren’t always specific or immediate, but the fact that he always asked was what mattered to clients.

His empathy allowed them to enter the frame together and ultimately offer feedback that facilitated growth.

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
How are you listening in a way that allows people to be touched by your gifts?

Schwartz’s groundbreaking study on the personality differences of satisficers versus maximizers proved that just as happiness may be a matter of choice, choice may also be a matter of happiness.

How, and more importantly whether, we make choices influences, whether we are happy or not.

For example, do you have that colleague or family member who is excessively thorough? Someone who makes you feel worse off as the options increase?

This is exasperating to my soul. Like when we all go out for lunch at the office. You hope it’s going to be a relaxed, enjoyable thirty minutes away from the stress of the workplace, but in reality, it’s just an infuriating exercise in indecision.

My old coworker was the king of lunchtime anxiety. Whenever he would finally make a meal choice, that was only the beginning of his neurotic quest. He insisted on imagining what all the other menu possibilities were, becoming curious about what would have happened if he had chosen differently, even trying to get information about how all the other people’s meals turned out, only giving him plate envy and regret the decision he made.

For the love of god, it’s just a fucking sandwich, try to enjoy yourself.

Why do people make life hard when it doesn’t have to be? Why do we immediately attribute intellectual virtue to thoroughness?

If we want to have a real shot at happiness, choice minimalism is going to get us there.

Zuckerberg, love the guy or hate the guy, does do one thing right, which is wear the exact same outfit every single day. He famously said that he wanted to clear his life to make it so that he had to make as few decisions as possible about anything except how to best serve his community.

Proving my theory, that the best decision is the one we don’t have to make.

Because that way, there is no pre choice, current choice or post choice pondering. There is no corner around which there might be something better.

We simply look no further and allow the countless other available choices to become irrelevant, so we can all just focus on enjoying the moment for one in our lives.

Happiness is more than a matter of choice, but choice is a matter of happiness.

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
Are you allowing yourself and others to get snared into an endless tangle of option anxiety?

Some people are defined by what they hate rather than what they like.

They are creatures who gain power, status, authority and applause by putting things down. Believing that anyone who expresses joy is either deluded, misinformed or just plain stupid.

The problem with this approach to interpersonal relations is, negativity has an extremely short lived half life. It’s easier and more satisfying in the moment to connect with other people over negativity, venting, or blame, but it’s not a sustainable long term strategy.

Do the math. Before you jump into a conversation and start commentating about how awful everything is, ask yourself:

Is it honestly worth putting aside your own peace of mind and potential for joy to feel this negative feeling?

It’s certainly cleansing to share the weight and lay your cross down, and everyone should have people to do that with. But that can’t be the only point of connect between you and the world.

There is a reverberant joy in this life that is available to all of us, and it requires that we step into the vulnerability of hope.

Roark delivers his impassioned speech about this principle towards the end of my favorite novel:

You must learn not to be afraid of the world. You must find your own way. You’ll win, because you’ve chosen the hardest way of fighting for your freedom.

How much life are you giving your negativity? Just how dominant are you allowing it to get?

Don’t take the easy way out. Negativity is easy to find, easy to dispense and even easier to rally people around.

And resisting the pull of that force is no easy task. But soiling every conversation with shit doesn’t have lasting value.

It’s like feeding your relationships with sugar. It’s tempting and delicious and feels good emotionally at the start, however within twenty minutes, you’ve got a headache and you’re ready for a nap.

If you want to be someone others want to be around, trust that carrying negative thoughts is not worth the disturbance and loss of serenity, and reach for joy instead.

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
Will you help spread the virus of negative commentary, or will your attitude be the antidote?