The other day I was listening to a parenting podcast and I heard a term that I found interesting.
Frustration tolerance.
We will never be able to eliminate frustration, so we have to learn to tolerate it.
This got me thinking about the difference between two ideas: Eliminate vs. Tolerate.
If you're trying to eliminate something, your goal is to reduce the instances of that thing to zero.
If you're willing to tolerate something, you accept that instances of that thing will be greater than zero; therefore, your goal is to learn how to deal with that thing when it comes up.
These are two very different goals.
I once learned that frustration occurs when something gets in the way of us meeting a goal.
Suppose you have two people experiencing the same thing and for some reason they both end up frustrated with the thing.
If the cause of one person's frustration is a failure to eliminate and the cause of the other person's is a failure to tolerate, then it's highly unlikely those two people will ever find common ground, because their goals are fundamentally different. The beliefs underlying those goals are different too.
Our son has been having a tough time handling his emotions recently. He is almost nine years old. I'm fairly certain that's how many almost-nine-year-olds are. Don't we all have trouble handling our emotions at times?
Sometimes, his emotions will get the best of him and his lack of skills to handle them will cause him to say something disrespectful or do something disrespectful. Lately, it's been the words he uses towards others (or himself) in these moments that have been particularly hard.
As his parent, if I hope to eliminate the moments when his emotions are greater than his skills, I've just invited frustration as a permanent companion. On the other hand, if my approach is to tolerate, then these moments present a valuable opportunity to practice.
What do you need to eliminate and what do you need to tolerate?
