and insecurity arising from the feeling that a particular challenge we face is insurmountable.
Let us note the following. We do not
feel frustrated because the challenge that causes the frustration has announced
to us that it is insurmountable. We do not feel frustrated because friends or
foes have told us that we cannot get out of that quagmire. We are frustrated
because we have conditioned our minds to feel that there is no way out of a
particular challenge. It is in the mind. This condition arises when we are stressed
to our wits end. The sense of frustration is caused by the challenges of life.
What is a
challenge? Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines it as a difficult task or problem:
something that is hard to do: an invitation to compete in a
game, fight, etc.
The Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary, on the other hand, defines it as a new or difficult task that tests somebody’s
ability or skill. A challenge, wherever, however, and of whatever magnitude
we encounter it, is a test. It comes to, and is meant to test our mental
ability, our strength of character, and our skillfulness in exploiting our
innate God-given survival resources, especially our mental energy. It is a test
of strength. God’s word puts it this way, If
thou faint in the day of adversity, thy strength is small (Proverbs 24:10).
In line with the above scripture, getting frustrated to the point
of contemplating suicide or feeling that the fiery challenge we encounter is
the end of the world for us, is an evidence of lack of strength – mental strength.
It comes because we have conditioned our minds to feel that way.
In 2011, a man who vied for but lost a senatorial position during the
Nigerian National Assembly Elections, jump into the Lagos Lagoon and got
drowned probably to escape the shame of loss or perhaps to escape being harried
by creditors. Just last week, a man in his 50s set himself ablaze and got burnt
to ashes in Abuja purportedly because he owed a bank and some individuals to
escape being jailed or perhaps being touted a debtor. In 2009, a bank director,
who allegedly was culpable in bank fraud that grounded the financial
institution was remanded in Ikoyi Prison, Lagos, after his first appearance in
court. When he arrived the prison and saw the dehumanizing state of the facility,
he was quoted as exclaiming “I can’t survive this!” Four days later, he died in
custody. Ironically, two days after, he was posthumously discharged and
acquitted as having no case to answer in the allegation. All these happened
because these individuals have conditioned their minds to be frustrated and
defeated.
That one survives a shipwreck in a lonely sea depends on how he
conditions his mind and how he harnesses his mental energy. That one escapes a
lethal inferno on the attic of a skyscraper depends on his state of mind.
Fretting in the face of any challenging situation is conditioning our minds to
begin to feel helpless. It is stepping into the threshold of giving up, the
quitting or grasshopper mentality. In Numbers 13:33, the children of Israel
said after they had been sent to scout out the land they were supposed to
possess: And there we saw the giants, the
sons of Anak, which come of the giants: and we were in our own sight as
grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight.
The pathetic truth here is
that it was not the Anakims that adjudged the Israelites as grasshoppers. It
was the Israelites themselves that believed they were grasshoppers in
comparison to the Anakims. As they conditioned their minds to feel that they were
insignificant and helpless before their enemies, their mindset changed and made
them believe that the Anakims also saw them as grasshoppers. It is in the mind.
You are not frustrated until you accept that you are frustrated.
The winning mindset is the mindset of champions. A champion is not
a person who is skillful in dodging blows, he is a person, who, in spite of all
the blows he receives, he stands strong to knock out his opponent. He is not a
person well skilled in evading challenges, but a person who confronts whatever
challenge comes his way head on and comes out smoking. He is the (as Theodore
Roosevelt would say) “man who is actually in the arena,” of inevitable
challenge, “whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly,
who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without
error or shortcoming,…who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best,
knows in the end the triumphs of high achievement,…”
The winning mindset is knowing and BELIEVING that whatever is hot
will eventually get cold, or as the Holy Scripture puts it: There hath no temptation taken you but such
as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted
above that you are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to
escape, that ye may be able to bear it. (1 Corinthians 10:13).
To win lies in your mind;
to lose also lies in your mind. See the next challenge not as another round of frustration;
see it as another opportunity to exhibit your mental strength.
You will come out a champion.
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