Frustration... My Achille's Heel

Do most people have one thing that pushes their buttons, causes them to lose their cool? I can be calm in a crisis, I can manage an event with 100's of people and thousands of details to deal with, I can be patient with almost anyone in a training situation, but I start to lose the plot when I am truly frustrated.

I have always known I don't cope well with frustration. There is a very good reason why golf is not my game. And I have always identified that I get frustrated with myself at various times, for eg, scoring badly at a game I'm usually good at - which then leads to me playing worse, the more frustrated I get (I'm having flashbacks to AMF Bowling League and Volleyball Matches).

But I have only just started to understand that a lot of my stress situations relate back to frustration also. I don't like myself when I get stressed - I can be short tempered, demanding and snippy. What I hadn't realised till recently is that I get stressed when I'm frustrated. I wasn't stressed in my photography job because of the of the nature of the job, I was frustrated that I was expected to provide a quality portrait service in 5 min. I wasn't stressed in class due just to student misbehaving, but because I was frustrated that they couldn't see the cause and effect - bad behaviour= consequences, good behaviour= pleasant class, fun activities etc.

Yesterday I had a very frustrating morning and I felt myself turning into 'stress girl'. That hasn't really happened to me at work in the 3 years since I started my current role, and I have dealt with plenty of stressful situations. So I finally realised it was the frustration pushing my buttons, bringing out the worst in me.

I'm hoping this revelation will help me avoid that stress reaction. Maybe if I can see the frustration coming I will be able to deal with it differently.

Do you have something that sets you off? Your own personal Kryptonite? Tell us about it.