5 Essential Steps to Be Happier and Achieve Your Dreams

You can just transform your frustration into fuel.

Key points

• Learning to engage and resolve frustration can transform obstacles into fuel for a happier and more productive life.
• The choices you make when faced with frustration can determine whether you will experience growth, decline, or stagnation.
• One five-step process includes confronting frustration, deciding, a test period, and a tipping point.

Do you want to live a happier life? And find the energy to achieve your dreams? Most people do. But with all the advice available, choosing the right path is challenging.

For over 25 years, I’ve provided psychotherapy to people seeking a better life. They yearned for new careers, improved home lives, better relationships, or more creative activities. Over time, I’ve noticed that the folks who achieved their ambitions had one crucial quality in common.

Confronting frustration is the fuel that drives maturity. When you engage and resolve frustration, you trigger a leap in maturity, a surge of confidence, and a healthy burst of self-esteem. And yes, you’ll even feel happier.

The first step in this process is vital.

1. Confronting Frustration

At the root of frustration is discomfort. Chances are you’re dissatisfied; perhaps you feel stuck at work or in an unhappy relationship. The longer you experience dissatisfaction, the more tense and stressed you become.

As internal pressure builds, many folks turn to substances to numb themselves, such as drugs or alcohol. Others may choose denial or compartmentalization. Such choices only temporarily diminish frustration; they don’t resolve it. You may experience momentary relief, but eventually, the frustration returns, and you feel stuck again.

Resolving frustration requires examining your choices when faced with frustration, which brings us to the second step:

2. Setting a Determination

After you identify the source of your frustration, it’s time to consider your options:

• How can you confront the situation?
• What steps can you take to address it?
• Who are the players involved?

Engaging with frustration is always challenging, so setting a personal determination is crucial. Determination awakens courage.

If your determination is, “I want a new job,” some questions you may explore include:

• “Do I quit?”
• “Do I set up a meeting with my boss?”
• “Do I start interviewing for new positions elsewhere?”
• “Do I confront my co-workers about their behavior?”
• “Do I ask for a promotion or raise?”

Gather support, consider options, and come up with plans. It may be helpful to rehearse what you want to say, make lists, or journal about your concerns.

As Buddhist peace advocate Daisaku Ikeda writes:

When your determination changes, everything will move in your desired direction. Every nerve and fiber will immediately orient itself toward your success when you resolve to be victorious. On the other hand, if you think, “This is never going to work out,” then at that instant, every cell in your being will be deflated and give up the fight.

Once you make your determination and confront your frustration, you will experience the next step:

3. The Test Period

Wanting a happier life begins with managing frustration better. Anxiety can spike. You may feel unsure, experience doubt, or question your judgment.

It also invites pushback. People may be critical of you, discourage you, deny your requests, or undermine your plans. Obstacles frequently appear during the test period. For example, an object moving forward through space meets resistance; it is the same when you take chances and push yourself out of your comfort zone, which brings us to the most dramatic step:

4. The Tipping Point

Everything hangs in the balance. The outcome is unknown; your determination comes under fire:

• Do you back down?
• Or do you press forward despite resistance?

The tipping point is exciting/terrifying because everything is on the line, and the outcome hinges on your choices. If you quit, abandon your determination, lose your patience, or do something destructive, you return to step one: frustration. This doesn’t mean you failed; it’s time to return to the drawing board and start again. (See “Self-defeating Habits That Destroy Happiness.”)

Frustration isn’t the enemy; how you choose to act in the face of frustration determines whether you experience growth, decline, or stagnation.

5. The Breakthrough

You hung in there, didn’t quit, persevered, and broke through. As a result, you experience a surge of confidence, maturity, and self-esteem.