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[00:00:00.640] - Oliver (Host)
Welcome back to another episode of English and Beyond, a podcast for advanced learners of English as a foreign language. If you find any of the podcasts difficult to understand or you would like to practise some of the more difficult vocabulary, you can find a transcript and vocabulary flashcards at www.morethanalanguage.com. César, how are you?
[00:00:28.900] - César (Guest)
Well, my lower back hurt. Hurts a bit. I'm slightly tired. I didn't sleep properly last night. Well, I, I did sleep properly, but I didn't sleep enough.
[00:00:40.240] - Oliver (Host)
Okay.
[00:00:41.260] - César (Guest)
But I'm okay.
[00:00:42.570] - Oliver (Host)
Because you got up early because a friend came to stay or came to visit.
[00:00:46.050] - César (Guest)
Yeah, came for breakfast at 7am, which is a very unusual time for a Spanish person to come for breakfast.
[00:00:53.500] - Oliver (Host)
And because it was so early, I meant, you know, you had to cook breakfast. Because normally you would go out for breakfast together, but you actually ended up cooking it. And how did you feel about that? César, I'm hinting that I want you to use a particular adjective.
[00:01:07.910] - César (Guest)
How do I feel about feeling a bit censored today?
[00:01:10.970] - Oliver (Host)
You can't swear in this podcast. We're a family friendly podcast as well.
[00:01:14.530] - César (Guest)
Can you beep that word?
[00:01:16.050] - Oliver (Host)
I will. Okay.
[00:01:16.960] - César (Guest)
Thank you.
[00:01:17.800] - Oliver (Host)
Like, various censored noises.
[00:01:21.590] - César (Guest)
Are you going to beep all that?
[00:01:23.320] - Oliver (Host)
Yeah.
[00:01:23.660] - César (Guest)
Okay. I feel censored frustrated.
[00:01:26.570] - Oliver (Host)
Yes, exactly. Exactly.
[00:01:27.710] - César (Guest)
Not about our friend coming.
[00:01:29.410] - Oliver (Host)
You've got an episode out of it as well, don't you? You've recorded a video together. No, I wanted you to say that you're frustrated because I feel extremely frustrated. And that is the topic of today's episode. And in fact, this is our third attempt at recording this episode because basically every time we try to do the episode, every time we've tried to do just our normal jobs this week, nothing has gone well, nothing's gone properly. And that has compounded the intense bad mood that I have been in all week, which we already talked about in Spanish for False Beginners. We literally did an episode just about being in a bad mood. And unfortunately that hasn't improved since then. It, it's gotten worse, probably.
[00:02:19.570] - César (Guest)
I feel you're better than on Monday.
[00:02:22.160] - Oliver (Host)
Maybe.
[00:02:22.710] - César (Guest)
Well, maybe yesterday.
[00:02:24.170] - Oliver (Host)
Maybe it's changed. Maybe it's changed. I feel more frustrated now because I, you know, I had a long period when, when we recorded the episode and I was going through it and editing it and realised that there was a significant technical issue that meant that I couldn't use that episode. It meant that I was in that phase of, you know, almost shaking my laptop and just getting so annoyed. And that is what I want to talk about today. I, I don't have a monologue. Normally I have a monologue where I kind of give my spiel about the topic, but we don't have that today. Instead we're just going straight in with the conversation. And that partly reflects the fact that I just didn't feel like doing a monologue because I was in a bad mood and now I feel frustrated. So we're going to be talking about frustration because I feel like I am unusually badly equipped to deal with frustration.
[00:03:16.700] - César (Guest)
And you think, you have a theory?
[00:03:19.420] - Oliver (Host)
Well...
[00:03:19.880] - César (Guest)
Do you want to disclose that theory or is it too private, too personal?
[00:03:24.080] - Oliver (Host)
It's not, it's, it's not very personal. But you know, my, my dad does listen every week and my mum listens occasionally. But you know, obviously I was spoiled as a child and I don't, I don't think that, I don't think that's really the reason for it. That would just be an excuse to say that it's my parents' fault. Although obviously everyone loves to say all the time that everything is their parents' fault. No, I used to love saying that to my parents.
[00:03:48.110] - César (Guest)
Especially millennials.
[00:03:50.130] - Oliver (Host)
Oh, is it?
[00:03:51.060] - César (Guest)
We love blaming our parents.
[00:03:52.510] - Oliver (Host)
Well, I think it's, I think it's, I think every generation likes to blame the parents and I'm sure that if the millennials did it, subsequent generations will do it more.
[00:04:01.670] - César (Guest)
But I don't hear from people like Boomers, people from born in the 50s, 60s, saying things like, oh, "I've got that issue because of this", or "my mum used to do this to me, so that's why now I behave in this way". I feel it's like more millennial or Gen Z.
[00:04:21.380] - Oliver (Host)
I don't know, obviously and I think, you know, you, you probably can't generalise about a whole generation. I think that probably Boomers, which is my mum's generation, I think that they probably don't talk so much about how they feel. But I think if you actually have a conversation with them and ask, I think they will talk about the impact that it had on them, the way that they were raised. They talk about formative experiences from when they were young. You know, I think that my mum, when I did an episode of this podcast with my mum, we definitely talked about how her, her, what she had experienced as a, as a child and the parenting style of her parents had affected how she was as a parent. And I'm kind of joking about the spoiledness because I really don't think it is my parents' fault. But I think I had such an easy life growing up and I don't just mean kind of my parents, you know, buying me what I needed and what I wanted, which was obviously very lovely of them. But in addition, I think that I was just very lucky in other ways as well. And so I don't think I've developed very well tolerance to frustration. That said, it might just be my personality.
[00:05:32.290] - César (Guest)
But you must have had different times during your childhood where you didn't get what you wanted. Not only in terms of video games, but things like, I don't know, wanting to be accepted in a specific group at school or...
[00:05:52.350] - Oliver (Host)
I don't know...
[00:05:53.120] - César (Guest)
Being invited to a birthday party. I don't know. There must be like. I feel, I feel like I experience, I experienced frustrations from the very beginning of my life.
[00:06:05.290] - Oliver (Host)
Yeah. I suppose that kind of the social exclusion that we're talking about there, where you might be drawing on your own traumas César, I don't think that that's something that would have caused me frustration. I wasn't the most popular person at school, so obviously I wouldn't have been invited to every birthday party, but I don't think that that would have caused me frustration as such. So, firstly, I think that we should probably define exactly what we mean by frustration. Frustration, for me, is that image of - well, you can see it very early on in life, can't you? With toddlers, I would say, when they, I don't know if you've seen those adverts for condoms -
[00:06:46.430] - César (Guest)
When they get a child having a tantrum.
[00:06:49.330] - Oliver (Host)
Yeah. I think it's actually a French advert that's most famous, where the child is screaming like, "je veux mes bonbons", like "I want my sweeties". And it's pulling everything off the, off the - I was going to say the grocery store, that's so American - off the supermarket shelves and the father is just looking absolutely miserable. And then it turns out to be an advert, I think, for Durex or something like that. So, you know, and you see it all the time now on Twitter, on Reddit, people saying this is the best possible advert for birth control. Children behaving badly. And a lot of the time it's really just children behaving with, you know, dealing with frustration.
[00:07:30.160] - César (Guest)
Yeah.
[00:07:31.190] - Oliver (Host)
And then theoretically, we should get better at managing that. But one of the things often - sorry to interrupt you - but one of the things that often I, I remember having. What?
[00:07:42.310] - César (Guest)
Because you didn't interrupt me.
[00:07:44.260] - Oliver (Host)
Well, I had the intake of breath. I was like, "No, no!"
[00:07:48.490] - César (Guest)
I was building up the first syllable.
[00:07:50.550] - Oliver (Host)
Yeah. So when I was teaching the kids would often express to me, they would say that they felt very frustrated by the lack of kind of control that they had over their lives, in the sense that they would have to follow rules that seemed arbitrary, that seemed senseless, without any purpose or reasoning behind them. And to be honest, they were sometimes totally correct: the rules sometimes were a bit like that. And they would feel very frustrated with this and they would fantasise about what their lives were going to be like at work. And I used to say to them, you know, fair enough, totally get where you're coming from - school can be a frustrating place. But you have to reconcile yourself to the fact that it might actually be even worse at work, because if a student shouted at me, I wasn't actually that bothered. A student could be very rude to me and sometimes I would find it quite amusing, or we would have a conversation about it and there are not really any major consequences. They might get a detention, that kind of thing. But a lot of the time you'd find teachers who I think were quite amiable people - not always, obviously - but you could express your frustrations in a way that meant you weren't going to get into a lot of trouble.
[00:09:05.880] - Oliver (Host)
But you could never say to your boss at work half the things that you say to your teacher at school because you'll be fired or you'll just never get a promotion, you won't get paid. And then, you know, that's a real problem. So actually, I think it's quite interesting that you, you have to deal with frustration a lot at school and then you progress onto work and you have to deal with it in the lower levels and then you get to become a boss and it comes like full circle, where you almost become like a toddler, potentially, where - when I was working the law firm, the partners were sometimes, when they were frustrated about something, they behaved like actual children, you know, young children, not even teenagers. If you see what I mean. Did you have that experience at work?
[00:09:53.060] - César (Guest)
Only in one company, but I think it was more related to the culture. I worked for different companies that came from different countries and different cultures, and it was quite different. So I think if the company was very, there was a very, a remarkable hierarchy in the company, where you were the boss so you, you get to treat people like censored.
[00:10:18.370] - Oliver (Host)
When you say remarkable hierarchy, I guess you mean like a very clear hierarchy.
[00:10:22.110] - César (Guest)
Yes, thank you. Only in that case. But normally I had. I had really good bosses in general. I mean, I think in law it's especially bad, right?
[00:10:33.080] - Oliver (Host)
I think, I think it depends on the person to an extent, because how you deal with frustration is quite a personal thing. And actually - well, we'll talk about how you deal with it versus how I deal with it.
[00:10:43.400] - César (Guest)
No, I was thinking when you gave that example of this advert for condoms where the kid had a tantrum at the supermarket, I was thinking that when we became, when we become adults is more or less the same, we still have tantrums, we just get better at hiding them. So we try, we look composed and, you know, like decent people, but inside, sometimes we still have that child crying and kicking everything.
[00:11:14.440] - Oliver (Host)
I think the frustrations that I have are linked a lot of the time to a lack of patience. Like, if I've decided I'm going to do something, I want to do it now. Like, I'm not very good at sitting back and just waiting. And so if, for example, with technology, something is failing continually and it's not something I can, I can change or control, I just have to wait. I find that extremely frustrating.
[00:11:38.840] - César (Guest)
Do you think it's getting worse with age?
[00:11:45.010] - Oliver (Host)
I don't know. I don't know. I think I've always been bad.
[00:11:50.260] - César (Guest)
Okay. Because I have noticed, not you, but I have noticed in me that I consider myself quite patient.
[00:11:59.490] - Oliver (Host)
Yeah.
[00:11:59.840] - César (Guest)
Do you think I'm a patient person?
[00:12:01.150] - Oliver (Host)
Very patient. Exceptionally patient.
[00:12:03.380] - César (Guest)
But I think because now when you're an adult, you are actually able to trade sometimes patience for, for money, right? You can pay for the priority boarding ticket on a plane, for example, things like that. And I do experience more and more this kind of, "I wish I could maybe pay or do something to do this more quickly or get this done earlier".
[00:12:33.800] - Oliver (Host)
Do you know, there's, I have a good example of that for you, where you've mentioned this in the podcast before, but every single time we get on a plane now, you say Taylor Swift wouldn't have to wait.
[00:12:42.560] - César (Guest)
I always think I wish I were Taylor Swift. And I mean, I tend to care about, you know, climate change and all that. And sometimes I like, I wish, I wish I were Taylor Swift, I had a private jet and I could fly everywhere without queuing, without waiting, without putting up with, you know, all this waiting that you have to put up with when you are boarding or at the airport.
[00:13:10.660] - Oliver (Host)
For me, for me at the moment, I really feel it keenly with technology, that technology is really bothering me.
[00:13:16.650] - César (Guest)
And you're using way more technology now in this job than before because you are basically with your laptop eight hours per day.
[00:13:24.070] - Oliver (Host)
Well, I suppose I used a lot of technology when I was teaching as well, but it was kind of a much more boring technology and much more stable. Like the things that we're doing now, they require a lot more effort. I guess I don't know how to do them as well, so I'm learning. But the things that are causing frustration on aren't the learning processes, it's just the fact that things just don't work very well. And I, I do think that as you get older, you hear people complaining more, with more age about things just not working.
[00:13:54.390] - César (Guest)
Yeah.
[00:13:54.990] - Oliver (Host)
And I also hear lots of people talking about technology and saying technology is supposed to make your life easier. But it seems sometimes that it actually does complicate things a little bit.
[00:14:05.010] - César (Guest)
It makes your - yeah, technology makes your life easier as long as you know how to use it. Otherwise it makes it way more complicated.
[00:14:13.400] - Oliver (Host)
I just feel like I have got such little tolerance now. And I said to you earlier today that I was thinking, I think I genuinely need to like go to therapy or something or read a book about dealing with patience issues. But the thing that I think is different between, between you and me is that you are much better at internalising that frustration. You don't take it out on other people ever, really. We've talked about before, actually that you, you might get to a point where you kind of explode. But I don't even have a lead up to that explosion.
[00:14:47.350] - César (Guest)
Yeah. But I also think in my experience, when I try to externalise that frustration with other people, let's say the computer doesn't work or there is something, you know, not working properly, and then you start complaining and then you start building up this rage within yourself, I think that's actually counterproductive because you end up, you're building up inside your brain chemicals and you end up really, really poisoned with all these feelings. So I try to count to 10, breathe. And because I'm like, okay, it's not like the computer is trying to, to make it harder for me today, you know?
[00:15:33.630] - Oliver (Host)
But it's all very well and good saying, oh, I try to count to 10 and I, you know -
[00:15:37.950] - César (Guest)
Meditate.
[00:15:38.750] - Oliver (Host)
Exactly, meditate. But if you are the kind of person that has the patience to count to 10 in a frustrating situation, you know, you're not the person who actually needs to count to 10. Does that make sense? You're not the person whose first reaction is to overreact. Yeah.
[00:15:57.760] - César (Guest)
Well, I feel, I felt, I think the most recent experience, and it's been like an ongoing process since we moved to Spain, I had to deal with a lot of frustration from Spanish paperwork.
[00:16:11.860] - Oliver (Host)
Right. From the bureaucracy Of Spain.
[00:16:14.360] - César (Guest)
Exactly. Yeah. I avoid using that word because I don't know how to pronounce it properly.
[00:16:20.380] - Oliver (Host)
Okay.
[00:16:20.930] - César (Guest)
So I prefer paperwork. Yeah, that's a very good example because obviously it's something that is important that you have to do. Because sometimes if you're frustrated about, I don't know, I don't know how to use this app that I wanted to use or it's way too complicated to create a TikTok. Let's say you can just say, like, "Okay, I'm gonna leave it. I don't mind. I don't want to do this." But with things that you have to do, they're mandatory. You have to do them. And there are so many obstacles. That's when frustration is its finest, no - worst.
[00:17:01.580] - Oliver (Host)
Well, when. When I was a teenager, I used to be a real perfectionist. You know, when I - before I would go to bed at night, for example, everything - I would stay up until like, 3am finishing off my homework, and then I would make sure that my bedroom was absolutely spotless. You know, everything was the right place, my shoes were lined up, everything was great like that. So I was quite a perfectionist when I was younger. And then I discovered and took to heart the phrase "Don't let perfect be the enemy of good enough", or "Don't let perfect be the enemy of good", which means that, you know, there's no point pursuing perfection if it actually is counterproductive and means that you produce something mediocre. Because good enough is good enough.
[00:17:41.540] - César (Guest)
Yeah.
[00:17:43.000] - Oliver (Host)
I used to use that phrase with my students all the time just to kind of encourage them to just be good enough and to do everything well rather than waste hours on one assignment and they end up failing all of their other subjects. But the trouble is that now I think, one: I've applied that too, generally to my life, so now I'm just like, oh, good enough, let's move on; and then the second thing is, as you were saying, when there's someone else who is judging it for you, like the, the Spanish Tax Revenue Office, good enough is not good enough.
[00:18:18.510] - César (Guest)
Yeah.
[00:18:18.880] - Oliver (Host)
You know, you actually need to -
[00:18:20.650] - César (Guest)
It has, like, implications, important implications in your life.
[00:18:24.300] - Oliver (Host)
Exactly. You do need to do everything perfect by someone else's mysterious standard. And I can understand that that would definitely generate a lot of frustration. And I'm on the verge of having to deal with that myself, now. You've done, you've dealt with it after arriving because you were already working as an "autonomo". Right? But now that I've got my residency, I can start working, then I'm going to have to start dealing with that as well once all that comes through. So I look forward to welcoming more frustrations into my life.
[00:18:56.850] - César (Guest)
In Spanish.
[00:18:58.210] - Oliver (Host)
In Spanish, exactly. Yeah. So, César, I'm, I mean, we've talked for, like, 20 minutes about frustration. We can't end on that note. There's got to be something more positive. What is it César, you know, the pressure is on you now because I'm not the positive one.
[00:19:19.020] - César (Guest)
Do you want to end on a positive note about frustration? But what do you want me to say?
[00:19:25.290] - Oliver (Host)
Whatever you like, it's just I'm putting all the, the pressure on you to come up with something positive.
[00:19:30.220] - César (Guest)
Well, I think like anything in life, at the end of the day, you can learn from experience. And, I mean, I'm just about to contradict myself because I said that I think it gets worse with age. And now I was going to say that maybe we should just learn from experience to, in order to deal with frustration better.
[00:19:56.120] - Oliver (Host)
Yeah.
[00:19:56.540] - César (Guest)
No, but -
[00:19:57.490] - Oliver (Host)
Well, I've got something that's not really that positive, but kind of semi positive. That again. My mum used to say to me all the time, my dad sometimes complains that I don't, I don't cite him as an example.
[00:20:07.610] - César (Guest)
Your mum is like the screenwriter of this podcast.
[00:20:10.430] - Oliver (Host)
She's the producer -
[00:20:12.930] - César (Guest)
In the shadows -
[00:20:15.090] - Oliver (Host)
- standing in the shadows with a gun, you know, saying, mention me. So she used to say when I was very stressed about exams, and she'd get fed up of telling me that it was going to be okay, she was like, well, they're going to come anyway, so do what you want, because, you know, whether you, whether you revise or not, they're going to be here in 24 hours. So it's just going to happen. Experience it, accept it. And I actually think that it's quite, quite good and truthful. And basically, these frustrating experiences make you really frustrated. But then they do just pass, because inevitably they do. You have these deadlines for things like the Revenue Service, and you think, how am I going to get this done in time? Yeah, how am I going to file my taxes? How am I going to complete whatever, whatever things I have to do before the deadline? And almost always you actually do meet that deadline. And when you don't meet them, there's almost always a solution. Like, I can't, I've been frustrated so many times in my life, and I can remember very keenly my sources of frustration this week, but I can't remember anything I was frustrated about last month. You know, like, everything it: it does Pass. Like that phrase, "this too shall pass".
[00:21:25.530] - César (Guest)
I was thinking about that.
[00:21:26.710] - Oliver (Host)
Yeah. So that's -
[00:21:28.500] - César (Guest)
That's a more positive note.
[00:21:29.680] - Oliver (Host)
Yeah. Kind of false positivity that you get a lot from me.
[00:21:33.030] - César (Guest)
Perfect.
[00:21:33.750] - Oliver (Host)
And I suppose the real positivity here, listener, is that even if you think that we are morons and you learn, obviously you'll learn nothing from us, kind of like in terms of spirituality, because, you know, I especially have nothing to offer. But at least, hopefully you will have learned something in terms of language. Hopefully you have improved your English listening skills in listening to this episode. And that is the positive thing, isn't it? So, although it could actually be just a very frustrating experience having to listen to us as well?
[00:22:03.550] - César (Guest)
Maybe. Yeah. So it's a good learning, in that case, life lesson.
[00:22:07.870] - Oliver (Host)
We'll see. Well, if it's not too frustrating, please follow us, please rate us, please subscribe, because really, without it, the podcast doesn't grow. And then obviously, I can't carry -
[00:22:20.240] - César (Guest)
And you'll get frustrated.
[00:22:21.580] - Oliver (Host)
Yeah, well, I'll get frustrated, but more. More pressingly, it means that I can't carry on doing the job. So is that too much emotional. Emotional blackmail? I don't know.
[00:22:30.010] - César (Guest)
Yes.
[00:22:30.610] - Oliver (Host)
Yes. Well, do I leave it.
[00:22:33.450] - César (Guest)
Yeah.
[00:22:33.790] - Oliver (Host)
Okay.
[00:22:34.130] - César (Guest)
I think it's enough.
[00:22:35.260] - Oliver (Host)
Thank you very much, listener, for listening. And until next time, bye bye.
[00:22:40.260] - César (Guest)
Gracias.
[00:22:41.310] - Oliver (Host)
Bye.
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