Launching a mobile app, frustration, and creativity

My meditation app, Fully, got published to the app stores this weekend! Head to the launch post to read more,  or fullyapp.com download it for iOS or Android. The week or so leading up to getting published though, I caught myself getting frustrated, a lot.  Why?

Apple rejected my iOS app. Ok, fine. When I was addressing their feedback though, I ended up taking four times longer than I had anticipated, and ultimately ended up with code that mysteriously broke other previously working code. So I had to start the code for this feature from scratch, and use different packages to do what I wanted. All this pushed my launch date back by four days.

Throughout this whole process, I noticed myself getting frustrated a lot. Why couldn't Apple be more lenient? Why did I take so long to do what I wanted to do? Why couldn't I have better predicted how long things would take, or the dead-end I would go down?

Some part of me wanted to control the uncontrollable. But I can't control Apple. And things never go exactly according to plan; a launch date being pushed back four days isn't a big deal in the grand scheme of things anyways. I also can't control the fact that I'm not an expert Flutter developer with the decades of experience needed to better estimate how long and complex doing certain things in Flutter will be. Reality was one way, but the part of me that got frustrated didn't seem to want to accept it.

We all have that side. The part that wants to control. The part that wants the world to be the way it wants, reality be damned. The part that wishes things were different. It is also the same part that drives us to make progress. To try to improve our own situation, and ultimately the world's. To try to create a new reality.

I published apps in the iOS and Android app stores. Using one (Flutter) code base. And while my app is far from where I want it to be, I'm building it to help bring the single most transformative skill I've come across to the rest of world. What a time to be alive. My fun has just begun.

Follow my journey on Twitter.

Hey, don't you meditate? Shouldn't you *not* get frustrated or feel any other negative emotion by now?

We're wired to feel emotions of all kinds. Depending on what happens in our environment and our past experiences, different emotions will naturally arise.

Meditation doesn't teach you how to "eliminate" unwanted emotions. In fact, trying to push away or repress emotions will only make them come out later, stronger, and potentially manifested as counter-productive behaviors (just ask any therapist).

Instead, meditation trains you to "pause" before emotions become actions, and make those actions productive ones, instead of knee-jerk, often times counter-productive actions.

So, I and every other meditator still feel "negative" emotions like frustration and anger. It's just that these emotions disappear after a much shorter time and don't captivate our minds and control our behavior as much.