In Wednesday’s posting I explained how low frustration tolerance could prevent you from achieving your dreams.

Don’t think, however, that there is anything wrong with getting frustrated. It’s going to happen, to all of us. The problem arises when the way we act in response to the frustrating circumstance gets in the way of us achieving our goals.

No one is sure why people react differently to frustration. Victor Maslow created the hierarchy of needs which provides an overview of why people do the things they do. He opined that earlier gratification in one’s life made one more able to tolerate frustration.

“People who have been satisfied in their basic needs throughout their lives, particularly in their earlier years,” he wrote, “seem to develop exceptional power to withstand present or future thwarting of these needs simply because they have strong, healthy character structure as a result of basic satisfaction. They are the ‘strong’ people who can easily weather disagreement or opposition, who can swim against the stream of public opinion and who can stand up for the truth at great personal cost.”

Wouldn’t it be great if we could all be one of those people? But even if we aren’t, even if we suffer from low frustration tolerance, here are three strategies we can use to increase our tolerance for frustration:

Strategy 1. Change our attitudes about frustration.

It’s been theorized that some people have low tolerance for frustration because they think if they don’t get their way or if things don’t go the way they are supposed to, the consequences will be horrible. If you feel that way, you need to change that attitude. Being an intentional person means you chose your response. Give yourself permission to experience the frustration, and then move on. Tell yourself, “It’s not the way I want it, but it is tolerable. Even though it makes me disappointed, even though it makes me annoyed, I can tolerate it. I do not need to avoid it. I do not need to structure my life so I do not experience frustration. Frustration is not going to kill me.”

Strategy 2. Balance the long term and the short term.

This strategy also involves being intentional. It requires that you look at what is frustrating you. Often you will find out that the frustration involves your desire for short term satisfaction, at the detriment of your long term goals. When you see that not getting the short term desire may actually improve your life, in the long term, the frustration will not be as great.

Strategy 3. Play with frustration

This third strategy involves you intentionally putting yourself in situations in which you are likely to encounter frustration. The purpose is for you to experience frustration so you see, though it may be uncomfortable and inconvenient, it is not going to kill you. You certainly would prefer that things are different, that things were as they were supposed to be, but you can live with them the way they are.

There is hope for you even if you have not had the earlier gratification that creates people with high tolerance for frustration. By practicing these three strategies, you can become one of the strong people that Victor Maslow wrote about.

One of the reasons we need to learn how to motivate ourselves, rather than relying on someone else to motivate us, is that each one of us is unique.

One of the ways that we are unique is in the things that rob us of our motivation. We call these things our detractors.

But there are several detractors that are very common. In my next several blog postings, I will discuss several of the more popular detractors, and strategies we can use to minimize their impact on our motivation.

Today’s posting is about the detractor referred to as low tolerance for frustration.

When you are working toward something that is important for you, it is not uncommon for you to encounter bumps on the road. People will make promises that they will not keep. Deadlines that you have established will come and go, unmet. Deliveries will come late. Computer hard drives will crash or get viruses. Office equipment will break. People you have to deal with will be crabby or even rude.

The list goes on and on and on. All these things are frustrating. Frustration is a given; if you’re not getting frustrated, at least occasionally, you are either real lucky or you aren’t aiming too high with your goals.

So frustration occurs at some time to every one of us. The important issue for each of us, however, is how sensitive we are to this inevitable frustration. How sensitive we are to frustration is referred to as our frustration tolerance. What studies have shown, and which is something that we probably all know intuitively, is that people have different levels of frustration tolerance. People with low frustration tolerance cannot handle much frustration. People with high frustration tolerance can handle a lot of frustration.

People with low frustration tolerance act it out in different ways. Some people with low frustration tolerance when faced with a road block may rage uncontrollably. Others will break down in tears, just give up, and make no more efforts toward their goal. Others will look for someone to blame.

When a person with high frustration tolerance faces a roadblock, however, they persist, even though the task is difficult and even though things aren’t going their way.

Our frustration tolerance, and how we deal with frustration when it occurs in our lives, plays an important role in whether we will achieve our dreams. Why? Because the reality is life can be difficult. And if we aim high, it’s going to be even more difficult.

When you aim for the stars you will encounter a lot of frustration. You will be required to count on other people’s promises. You will need to interact with people who aren’t having a good day. And sometimes your best won’t be good enough. To make matters worse, you will be doing things continually, which creates a lot of opportunity for things to go wrong.

So the bad news is, we will face a lot of frustration on our path to achieving our dreams. But there is good news. The good news is we can increase our tolerance for frustration. In my next blog posting I will share ways for you to increase your frustration for tolerance.

I try to regularly ask myself, “Am I consistently taking the steps I need to take to make my dream come true?”

This is the standard I use to determine whether I am on track to making my dream come true. I suggest you consider using it as well.

This is what you need motivation for, for taking all those necessary steps. Most of us have the motivation we need to start a new project. In the beginning it sounds wonderful and we are excited to get started. But after a while the actual work starts, the shine has worn off, and all too frequently other things start to seem a little bit more exciting. This is when those best laid plans start to go astray.  This is when you need to boost your motivation, or you will never achieve your goal.

I am facing this right now.  My book is going to the printer this week and I need to walk my talk. I need to start more earnestly and consistently taking those steps I need to take to market the book, to market it like crazy. My book’s not going to help a lot of people make their dreams come true if they don’t hear about it.

And starting on a new art project is sounding pretty exciting.

So what do you do when this happens?

The first step is to figure out what those “necessary steps” are, and write them down.

I am reading Peter Bowerman’s The Well-Fed Self-Publisher, and there is so much to do in marketing my book, and it’s more than just a little overwhelming. But Bowerman gives some advice that felt comforting to me. He says that your marketing efforts will eventually reach their critical mass, and will start to snowball.  He urges his readers, therefore, to make sure to do something, at least one thing, on marketing your book every day.

I have taken his advice and do at least one thing every day. Making this decision gives me clarity, which is motivating. And it also makes marketing less overwhelming. This gives me a sense of control, which is also motivating.

The second step is to answer the question, “How do I know what “thing” I am to do on any given day?”

To answer this question I make a list of tasks that will bring me toward achieving my goal of being a best selling author, in other words, marketing tasks. When I say “make a list of tasks”, I mean “write down a list of tasks.” The task list I wrote down includes tasks such as blog, tweet, work on my youtube videos, contact fellow members of one of my linkedin groups to see about sharing blog postings, or just making contact with them to build a community.

It’s not unusual for me to come up with something not on the list that I need to do.  For example, I want to do some media work, so I will draft a press release and build a list of media contacts.

However, when I don’t have the time or energy to be creative about what to do, I can go to the list and pick something. The list leverages the motivation I do have. Even if my motivation is at a low point, it doesn’t take much motivation to pick one thing off my list and do it.

When you are feeling extremely unmotivated (it happens to all of us occasionally) leverage the tiny little bit of motivation you do have, by picking the most fun thing on the list. In my case the most fun thing on my list is creating a PowerPoint presentation using the principles I am reading about in PresentationZen, by Garr Reynolds. It involves using slides that enhance, rather than repeat the words I will speak in my presentation. Though it isn’t the art project that was tempting me, it is close enough to excite me, and get me working on my dream.

In my most recent blog posting, I wrote of the surprising realization that a strong desire for a certain goal was not enough to guarantee that I would become and stay motivated to make that goal come true. As I shared in that posting, the research shows that a strong desire is not enough, by itself, to keep you motivated.

What the research also shows is without a strong desire you are probably not going to make any worthwhile goal come true.

The reason for this is that most important goals require consistency. You have to keep doing the steps necessary to make the goal come true.

So how do you know if you have a strong desire?  It requires you to examine your feelings about the object of your desire.

The key question is. “Do you want to consistently do the work achieving the object of your desire will require?” If you don’t, then your desire probably isn’t strong enough, and you may want to consider finding something else to go after.

This is something that has come up in my life lots of times. In one case, I wanted to speak Spanish. However, I didn’t particularly want to study Spanish.  I know that being able to speak Spanish would require at least a half hour of study every day.  Since I don’t speak Spanish now it is unlikely I will ever speak it without studying it.

So I don’t pretend that I am going to study it when I know I won’t, and I don’t bemoan the fact that I don’t speak it.

I exercise my intent. I make a choice. If my desire at some point increases, perhaps because I am considering retiring in a Latin American country, I will purchase some good software and apply myself to consistently doing the work speaking Spanish will require.

Asking the key question will save you from wasting a lot of time chasing rainbows that you don’t deeply care about, and will free up time to pursue those things you really want, and you are willing to put in the time to achieve.

Being motivated and making your dreams come true requires you to be smart and not waste your time.  If you suspect you are going after something in a half hearted way, ask yourself if you are truly willing to put in the work. If not, move on to something else.

Since I was in my early thirties I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to be a professional speaker, teaching people and giving them skills that would make their lives better.

My desire was very strong, but no matter how many times I started working on making my dream of being a professional speaker come true in my life, I never seemed to keep at it. I had no staying power.

It was very frustrating, starting on it, and then suddenly realizing that I wasn’t still working on it. My plans just went awry. Continuously.

I couldn’t imagine what was going on. If I wanted something really badly, didn’t that mean I would keep working on it?

It seemed to me that merely wanting something really badly was not enough to keep me motivated. It was enough to get me motivated to start working on my dream, to get me to started taking the steps I needed to take to make my dream come true, but it didn’t seem like it was enough to sustain that effort. Obviously there were other things at play here; but what were those “other things?” What else did it take, what else beside a strong desire?

When I was earning my Masters in Education, I found out that my perception that there was something else was absolutely correct. Motivation is very important in education; if your learners aren’t motivated, no learning will take place. So you have to design motivation into your instruction.

After studying motivation in education for my masters, I studied, independently, motivation in sports and in employment. In my research I discovered that there are indeed two other things, beside a strong desire, that impact how motivated you are.

These two things are your confidence in your competence and your environment.

It was from this discovery that the model for motivation was created. The model says that motivation is a function (math speak for “directly impacted by”) three factors. These factors are your vision (the change you want to make in your life – primarily how strongly you desire it), your successability (how confident you are that will be successful in making the desired change) and your environment (the people and things that surround you).

The model tells us that any of the three factors can impact your motivation, either increasing it or decreasing it. Though the knowledge is good to have, what is more important is how you can use the knowledge.

Once you know the model, you can take steps to implement the model, making sure each of the three factors are optimized in your life so that your motivation is at its highest.

The model isn’t that complicated; in fact it’s rather simple.

Why not check out my other blog entries to find out how to implement it, and maximize your motivation?

Your desire is strong. Now make the other factors strong, too.

I don’t know about you, but sometimes it seems that I need to learn the same lesson, over and over again. Like the lesson in my last blog entry, about dealing with feelings of having failed.

I believe I have a great message, “Learn how to motivate yourself and your dreams will come true.”  So I want to get that message out. One way to do that is by doing guest blogs, so I submitted a guest blog to a site that looks good and was requesting proposals.

Just after I uploaded my blog Sunday night, I checked my email, and got a rejection letter to my submission. I thought I had given them exactly what they wanted – an essay from the heart, sharing a lesson I had learned, not preachy, etc., etc. Apparently not.

My immediate response was dejection, the feeling that I had failed. Thank heavens I had just posted a blog on that very topic. But it didn’t stop the feeling.

And this is one lesson that I didn’t share in my last post, I guess because I hadn’t learned it enough times.  That lesson is, “Don’t be surprised if you feel like a failure when a plan doesn’t go right.”

And accept it. Don’t accept you are a failure; accept that you feel like a failure. I don’t know if there is much you can do to not have those feelings, other than meditating two hours a day and frequenting a really good psychotherapist. Give it a couple of minutes, maybe even stew about how obviously the editor was threatened by my amazing writing skills and was afraid I would steal all his readers. And then move on. Look for the lessons in the circumstances; look for the good.

In my case, I don’t really have a lesson (except that lessons are all around us) but I did get one heck of a benefit out of the circumstance. I now have a heart warming essay that describes the model for self motivation. And, I just happened to be reading a great book, PresentationZen, by Garr Reynolds, which is about making slide presentations in which the slides reinforce, rather than repeat the words. His thesis is that the slides are there to add an emotional element to the spoken words.

I realized that the guest blog I wrote will be the text for a great presentation made in this style. Had I been “accepted” as a guest blogger, I never would have looked for another purpose for the essay; instead I would have been celebrating and missed a great opportunity.

As Ken Christian says in Your Own Worst Enemy: Breaking the Habit of Adult Underachievement, “Those who do not milk failure for what they can learn from it squander a major opportunity.”

I milked my failure, and am reading PresenationZen with renewed vigor, because I now have a place in which I can apply the knowledge I am learning. I think it’s going to be a wonderful presentation.

Helen Keller wrote, “The richness of human experience would lose something of rewarding joy if there were no limitations to overcome.”  She had some pretty amazing limitations, but our limitations, our obstacles, are just as real and just a big, to each one of us.

It’s great when we achieve our goals and conquer our mountains, but it doesn’t always turn out that way.  Sometimes we don’t overcome the limitations, and can’t seem to solve the problems and sometimes the obstacles are going to stop us dead in our tracks.

When that happens, and it invariably will, what should we do?

There are four strategies to dealing with failure and the feelings that may arise.

Strategy 1:  Accept that in order to do something really well, to get better and better, you need to continually put yourself in a position to fail, and, when you do fail, to correct for the failure.

“If things seem totally under control, you’re just not going fast enough.” — Mario Andretti

Realize that the journey to an important goal may not be a smooth one.  There will be missteps, and blocks and dead ends.  Prepare yourself for this, and do what you have to do. To do something really well, you have to continually put yourself in a position to fail and to correct for the failure.  And the way you do that is by taking risks.

Strategy 2:  Know that every mistake merely means an unwanted result.  Every mistake is but on opportunity for learning.

Be aware to the positive aspects of what we call failure.  The naval ships in World War Two had amazingly big guns, which would fire shells at targets on the land.  The gunner, the person who aimed the gun, had two controls.  The first control moved the gun left and right.  The second control raised and lowered the gun.  When the gunner thought he was on target he would fire the gun.  Then he would carefully observe the result.  If the shell went to the left of the target he would aim the gun to the right.  If the shell went to the right of the target, he would aim to the left.   If the shell went too far, over the target, he lowered the gun, but if it fell short of the target, he would raise the gun.

The gunner doesn’t bemoan the fact that he missed the target and call himself a failure.  He corrects for the error.  Each time he does this, he gets closer to the target.  And he only has to hit it once.

Failures allow us to fine tune and correct; sometimes it’s the only way to hit the target.  So thank your failure for the lesson it taught you, and use it, use the “failure”, to get closer to your target.

Strategy 3:  Pat yourself on the back, because if you achieve everything you try easily and without failing, you’re probably not pushing your limits; you’re probably standing right on top of the target.

We don’t want to be one of those people who stand right on top of the target, but gain nothing by it.  We want to be risk takers, moderate risk takers.

Strategy 4:  Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, start all over again.

The song Pick Yourself Up by Jerome Kerns and Dorothy Fields, from which this strategy is taken, is one of the most inspirational songs I know.  Don’t lose your confidence if you slip, the song goes, be grateful for a pleasant trip.

Perhaps because so many of us are tempted to just roll over and give up, many famous people have had something to say about what we need to do when we haven’t been able to accomplish what we have set out to do.

Oliver Goldsmith, an eighteenth century Anglo-Irish writer and poet said, “Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.”

The American poet, memoirist and actress Maya Angelou said, “You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated.”

Failing to accomplish what we set out to do never feels good.  But if you use these four strategies they will help you get the biggest bang for the buck from what did happen.

In the model for self motivation, the vision is that special change we want to make in our lives. Once we figure out what it is, the next thing we need to do is break it down into its component parts. The component parts of our vision are our goals. And just as we needed to write down our vision, we need also to write down our goals.

The end result is a list of goals that, once we accomplish the goals, we will have made our vision come true. And so it’s very important to spend some time getting all our goals written down.

But we want to make sure that not only have we identified all our goals, we also want to make sure that those goals are motivating. Many of our goals will require hard work, so it will be much easier for us to accomplish goals that are motivational.

What’s a motivational goal?

A motivational goal is:

1.  Specific and Measurable: Goals should be specific; they should establish ”who, what, where, when, which, why”.  Each goal should be clearly stated, and easily understood.  If a goal is vague, it won’t motivate; if not measurable, you won’t know when you have achieved it.  Try to establish concrete criteria for measuring progress toward your goal.  With measurable goals, you can evaluate your progress.

2.  Attainable and Realistic: Though a goal may be challenging, it must also be realistic.  If you don’t believe you can achieve a goal, you won’t be motivated to try.  An easy goal is perfectly appropriate, so long as it moves you toward manifesting your vision.  Each goal you attain increases your feeling of competence, which increases your motivation.

3.  Related to your vision:  Each goal It must be personal to you, it must move you toward your vision.  Every one of your goals must absolutely (not probably) bring you further on the path toward your vision; if they do, they are motivating.  Each goal must have a purpose. A related goal helps you sustain the day to day tasks that you must do to make your vision come true; they provide the necessary discipline.  Amotivation, a term coined by Dr. Edward Deci in The Psychology of Self-Determination, is what occurs to those who fail to see the purpose in what they are doing.

4.  Prioritized: You must prioritize your goals.  Doing this focuses your energy.  You can be working on a couple of goals at the same time, but too many goals at the same time can cause you to become unfocused and distracted.

We must accomplish our goals if we want to make our dreams come true.  And if we aren’t motivated to do the work that accomplishing our goals requires, we won’t accomplish our goals, and our dreams won’t come true.

But there’s no need for this to happen.

Make your goals motivating and you will accomplish them, and you will make your dreams come true.