The Biggest Challenge of a Challenge is Your Mind

For me, the past six years were made up of a sequence of challenges that I have fought to beat, where the toughness of my fight was directly proportional to the progress of time. This is due to many reasons, including the increasing intensity of the challenges, as well as my increasing level of maturity. Throughout my journey, one thing was continuously true: the more intense the challenge, the tougher the fight, the sweeter the outcome.

In November of 2016, I joined a data science immersive program in San Francisco at Galvanize. This was one of the best decisions of my life as it showed me the true meaning of passion and hard work. My whole being was challenged - mentally, emotionally and physically. That being said, I had never been more happy to have invested that much money, time and effort. I met the coolest and most driven people, who moved on to do very interesting things. My intuition of statistics and math became stronger. I learned a few new programming and querying languages. I learned and was trained on every step of a data science project. My way of thinking was molded to resemble that of a data scientist - a beautiful mix of engineering and analytics.

This January (2018), I joined a Udacity deep learning nanodegree foundation program. The reason for this one was merely a hunger for more data science and more machine learning. I spend time on this after work and on the weekends. And although I often complain to my family and friends about my lack of time and energy, I could not be happier.

With all that being said, today, I came to realize that the biggest challenge yet, was my brain. As I sat at my desk, iterating over my sentiment analysis network, I watched the clock as scheduled bus after scheduled bus went by. I was hungry and mentally drained, but I could not get up without knowing and understanding more. Criticism crept into my mind: Why are you not understanding this faster? Why don't you know more? You're the reason you're hungry. You're the reason you're tired.

I eventually pulled myself away from my screen and left. On my way home, I couldn't stop thinking about the thoughts that took over my mind. The same thoughts that surface whenever I'm challenged and exhausted. I remembered all the times I talked down to myself and made myself feel bad or guilty for not "learning faster" or "understanding deeper". I realized how often I shoot myself with the second arrow.

The concept of the second arrow comes from a Buddhist parable that goes like this:

Buddha once asked one of his student if being hit by an arrow is painful and if being hit by a second one is more painful.

He went on to explain that in life, the first arrow cannot be controlled and in turn, pain is inevitable, and the second arrow is optional, a reaction to the first: suffering. This parable is meant to shed light on how most of human suffering is self inflicted and can be mitigated.

A bit over a year ago, I began my mindfulness journey. At first I was just reading books and articles on what it means to be mindful as well as the different techniques I can use to help and guide me. Recently, I have started meditating.

This evening - these are the moments where mindfulness plays a critical role. These are the moments I have been practicing for. As soon as I got home, I got into my easy pose, I closed my eyes and I let my thoughts drift away. 

Tomorrow is another day.