Stop Fighting Yourself

I just got back from a 10-day Vipassana meditation retreat. This was my second retreat, and it was a much different experience from the first. Very tough, but one of the most rewarding things that I've done.

One of my biggest takeaways happened on the final day, as I was doing a last bit of deep work. Since I began practicing Vipassana, I have noticed a certain heaviness in my muscles as I meditate. After a while, I started to ignore this. But it came back during the retreat, and I realize that this heaviness was in fact tension. If I actively relaxed my muscles, the tension went away, and I became much more comfortable and peaceful. So the whole time I was making my life more difficult by unconsciously resisting the process that I was putting myself through.

I realized that we spend a lot of our time fighting ourselves. We doubt, undermine and second guess. This is wasted effort - very little is gained by doubting a decision that you have already made. It does make sense to reexamine a decision after sufficient time has passed, but this is much different from constantly worrying or reanalyzing.

Sometimes we fight ourselves by doing things that are contrary to our nature. I am at the heart a product engineer. I build cool products that people find useful. This is what makes me happy, and motivates me to work day after day. If I need to sell a product to make my business succeed, I am perfectly willing to do that. However, I will never be a sales person. I will be a product engineer who happens to also sell products. Everything that I do will start from my core skillset and motivation, and flow naturally from there. To do anything else is to deny my nature.