Hi Reader! 👋
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I hope you're ready for an amazing week.
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I just got home from a very fun event called CicLAvia, where they closed off 7.5 miles of streets across Downtown Los Angeles for the day and made it exclusively for bicycles. It was a BLAST.

My family goes to a few of these a year, and they're always inspiring and fun.
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​But the days aren't without frustration. Getting four bikes onto the bike rack, realizing at least one of the bikes needs adjustments we should really have taken care of months ago, finding parking in Downtown LA, disagreeing about where we should stop to eat (which we seemingly solved by stopping and eating at ALL the places) — and plenty more.
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Of course none of that stopped it from being an amazing and enjoyable day. Anyone who lets frustrations get in the way of enjoying whatever's happening is in for a lifetime of disappointment. Hence this week's main topic.

Sure, work can be frustrating.
But so can everything fun and worthwhile.

As serious professionals, making serious things happen, we take work seriously. So it’s natural that we feel frustrated when work isn’t working the way it’s supposed to work. (Wow, that’s a lot of crazy word play for the first paragraph.)
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In the early days (cough first decade or two cough) of my career, it seemed like “getting upset about things” was a fantastic way of proving I was passionate about, and therefore good at, my job.
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But getting upset can quickly turn to venting. Which quickly turns to complaining. Which quickly becomes a soulcrusher-filled black hole of negativity that drains all energy from anyone in a 25-foot radius. Complaining about stuff is typically 10x more disruptive to productivity than whatever the thing is that we're complaining about.
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Sure, yeah, work can be frustrating. But we also experience frustration when playing sports, or playing video games, or learning new hobbies, or going on vacation, or doing almost anything related to a toddler’s birthday party. Yet these are all fun things. (Some may push back on that last one, but I think you know what I’m going for here.)
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Frustration is a natural part of any activity. Especially enjoyable ones.
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Frustration doesn’t mean something’s wrong. It means we care.
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Overcoming those frustrations can often be the thing that makes something feel enjoyable. The result tastes that much sweeter for being hard-fought. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that frustration is fun... but it’s not the polar opposite either.
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A secret to success in any industry (and life in general) is to mentally reframe challenges or obstacles as opportunities. Opportunities to get better at what we do. Opportunities to add value. Opportunities to exercise our creative thinking and uncover solutions. Opportunities to collaborate with other smart people.
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Without frustration, we’d feel unchallenged and (gasp!) bored. (A related tip — if work feels boring, a powerful solution is to create ways to make it more challenging.)
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So let’s give our old pal frustration an awkward bro-hug. Because, yep — frustration is our friend. It’s that friend who drives us crazy whenever we spend too much time together... but our friend nonetheless.

Keep on crushing it,
-Tim-
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Let's Lightbulb - Founder / CEO / Crusher of Soulcrushers

Let's Lightbulb is a strategic facilitation consultancy, specializing in outcome-based workshops, off-sites, sprints and trainings. We specialize in working with leadership teams, inspiring creative thinking, and keeping things soulcrusher-free.

If you know of anyone looking for a facilitator for any of the above, we'd appreciate you sharing our info.

Every week in this newsletter, I share how to reduce the stuff that makes our work not-fun, and increase the stuff that makes work fun.

It's 98.3% Pollyanna-thinking-free.

Thanks for reading, and please share with friends and colleagues that might find it valuable — because we need more fun people in the world.