How to Find Gratitude in the Face of Challenges
Have you ever met someone and wanted them to go away as quickly as possible? Surely, we all feel this way at times. It’s difficult to be kind to people like this, yet it can be exceptionally rewarding. If nothing else, it’s a powerful practice for all the other frustrations we encounter in life.
While studying for my undergraduate psychology degree, I frequently crossed paths with a fellow student. We shared many interests, particularly a curiosity about how Asian philosophy has influenced modern psychology. He was always the first in class to raise his hand, eager to comment, and keen to have the attention of the class. From my perspective, however, his answers were at best only partially accurate. Before long, I found myself becoming increasingly annoyed with him.
At the time I was studying a type of meditation that focused on increasing one’s compassion to those who are challenging. I realized that it was hypocritical to be doing one thing on the meditation cushion and another in day-to-day life. So, after a particularly frustrating day with him, I decided to put my studies into practice. By practicing openness and patience, I was able to change my response to him. I saw his eagerness as a desire to make a positive impression and a contribution, and I felt compassion for the insecurity that led him to try to prove himself.
Within a week, my frustration level dropped. I found myself seeing him with new eyes. Intriguingly, I also noticed that he was seeking less attention in class. Perhaps he could subconsciously feel my positive regard and it met some of his needs for attention, freeing him to contribute more judiciously.
My wife, a developmental needs consultant, had a similar experience. One of her coworkers made a habit of pointing out the errors others made in their work by sending critical emails and copying everyone on them. Even the slightest mistake upset her. While my wife found this behavior irritating, she also recognized that it was the perfect opportunity to use this technique in her work setting.
She started bringing her coworker coffee when she went to the coffee shop, just to cheer her up a bit. She figured that if this coworker was spreading around so much negativity, she must be very unhappy. She wanted to brighten the woman’s day a little and give her an experience of generosity. After some time, however, the woman grew to like my wife and was even friendly toward her.
Again, my wife’s ability to change her experience with this individual ended up changing the behavior of this woman toward her as well. This was a welcome consequence, but not one that was under her control. We cannot expect to change people through our actions, only our experience of them.
This is not to say that we should minimize our natural emotional responses. Our emotions are like firecrackers. If we hold a firecracker in the palm of our open hand and it explodes, it doesn’t do a lot of damage, but if we close our hand tightly on it, the harm it causes drastically increases. Pent-up feelings of frustration lead only to more damage.
Reframing our perspective requires an actual internal shift. We can’t do this by toughing it out or telling ourselves to try to be more patient, because to do that we’ll have to clamp down on our own emotional experiences. It may be possible to hold them in for a while, but eventually, those emotions will explode outward.
Nor is it to suggest that we should ignore the need to set healthy boundaries. You don’t want to become a doormat who considers it a badge of honor to take everything everyone dishes out, all of the time. You may need to call people out when they push beyond your boundaries, and sometimes it’s healthiest to simply cut ties with them completely. The point is that it’s better to make that decision from a calm place, while you’re not embroiled with emotional reactions.
With practice, however, it’s possible to discover that the people we find most maddening are actually our greatest allies. They give us the opportunity to better ourselves, and that improves how we interact with other people in the future.
Often, the more frustrating a situation or person, the more we can grow from the experience, making us better prepared to meet the next challenge in a graceful and liberating way. Thinking about it this way, we can almost hope for annoyance and “enemies.” The more we deal with frustrating situations and people, the higher you rise both spiritually and in day-to-day life. Without that growth, it will be very difficult to achieve lasting success.
Honing these skills is seldom easy. It requires significant learning, which can be painful. In ancient times, swordsmiths in ancient times hammered swords repeatedly to get the perfect result—the very challenge to the metal’s integrity created the strength of the sword. From this perspective, every person we meet is a sword maker, and we’re the sword.
The more challenge they offer us, the more we can learn from them. The more frustration they bring, the greater the opportunity to temper the steel of our gratitude.
