Happiness and Frustration

Happiness and frustration go together. This may seem counter-intuitive at first blush, so let me explain.

Quoting author and marketing guru Dan S. Kennedy in the November, 2013, No B.S. Marketing Letter, “There seems to me to be a connection between the amount, the frequency, [and] the severity of frustration a person can handle and the kind of success they achieve.”

Quoting author and AEI president Dr. Arthur C. Brooks from his Summer, 2009, “Why Giving Matters” article in BYU Magazine, “Happy people show up for work more, work longer hours, work more joyfully, and are happier with every aspect of their productive lives. Happiness is the secret to success.”

[tweet “Hard work leads to frustration, but it also leads to success, as does happiness.”]

So, happiness and frustration go together.

More specifically,

[tweet “Runners and walkers become happier as they learn to deal with more frustration.”]

The more that you train and race, the more that you open yourself to frustration, but also to more success and more happiness.

There are many sources of frustration that we runners and walkers encounter.

An Extreme Example

To take an extreme example, consider one of the athletes whom I saw while I volunteered as a parking-lot attendant last Saturday morning at the Team RWB Veterans Day Race Series in The Woodlands, Texas.

1. He unloaded himself into a traditional wheelchair on the parking lot after parking his vehicle.
2. He maneuvered his racing chair — while in his traditional wheelchair — from the parking lot to several hundred feet away, rolling out onto the street and across a busy intersection, so that he could reach the start line.
3. Having apparently forgotten something in his parked vehicle, he rolled in his traditional wheelchair all the way back to his vehicle and then rolled back to the start line.

Some of us would have been so frustrated by that point that we may have given up. This man, on the other hand, clearly overcame these obstacles and very likely did very well in his race class.

Sources of Frustration that Most of Us Encounter

So, besides being grateful for not necessarily facing those obstacles, what are some of the sources of frustration that most of us runners and walkers encounter?

• Getting sidelined because of an injury during a training session
• Getting stuck behind a huge group of athletes at the start of a race
• Accidentally leaving a hydration belt or bottles at home or in a hotel room
• Becoming lost while trying to find the start of a race or a new location for the start of a group run or walk
• Getting caught on the road or trail with the wrong clothes for unexpected weather
• Completing a race with a much longer chip-time than desired

To make it through a training season, to the start line of a race, and through the race, we must avoid or overcome all of these sources of frustration … and more.

“What Doesn’t Kill You …”

“What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” is a popular aphorism that addresses part of what I am saying here.

However, (a) its focus on taking mortal risks does not apply to most training and racing, and (b) it says nothing about happiness.

I believe that …
[tweet “Overcoming frustration to achieve worthy goals leads to higher self-esteem.”]
And, this true self-esteem — not the phony self-esteem promoted by the self-esteem movement as immediately available to anyone — leads to lasting happiness.

Frustration Leads to Happiness

Quoting again from the same article by Dan Kennedy:

“A lot of people just labor. But when I labor, I always hope for a specific result. What about you? There are two by-products of the latter approach. One is success. Little success comes of thoughtless, aimless labor absent benchmarks and goal posts. The other is frustration. In the absence of targets and measurements, there’s very little cause for frustration. But with specific purpose for labor and clear measurement of its success, there is often a lot of frustration.”

I summarize this by the simple sequence:
[tweet “More training and racing. More frustration. More success. More happiness.”]

What about You?

What do you think?

• Do you agree that frustration is inevitable as we become happier runners and walkers?
• What sources of frustration would you add to my list?
• Do you believe, as I do, that the innumerable sources of frustration that marathoners and other endurance runners and walkers face and overcome make them some of the happiest people on Earth?

Please share your thoughts with your fellow readers and me by leaving a comment below. Thanks!