Eustress and Distress

This week a new phase has started in my process as a software developer intern. I have been full of mixed feelings because this phase begins to interview me.

Improvement

This phase reminds me of when I started taking my first job interviews, both in this internship and in other projects that I have been involved with. This has led me to realize how much I have grown as a developer because in an evaluation interview I have been able to answer things that I did not know 6 months ago. And I’m very proud of that.

Eustress and Distress

This week I have learned about these two types of stress: distress and eustress. It has helped me a lot to understand that feeling stressed is not bad, as long as this stress is not rational.

Distress is when you are worried or distressed by things that you cannot control that do not depend on you. Therefore, this type of stress only consumes your energy. For example, getting stressed out by traffic or because the world is going to end.

Eustress is a type of stress that gives your life purposes and challenges. It is the feeling nervous about speaking in public, the discomfort you feel when learning something new, the thought that you should learn a new language. This type of stress makes us challenge ourselves to progress and to expand our comfort zone. For example, this week I had an English session (which would be similar to a job interview), which put pressure on me to study and prepare for that occasion. In the end it was not as bad as sometimes you imagine it would be, and the most important thing is that this helps you feel more comfortable the next time the same happens.

In short, it is setting yourself challenges that make you uncomfortable and make you leave your comfort zone and that consequently become part of your comfort zone.

Motivation == Progress

What I like to do is progress. My motivation has always been to progress even if it sounds too simple. It motivates me to know that when I do a certain amount of work I will be a better version of myself. Then I learned and understood that an amount of work is the only thing that separates me from where I want to be.

This is really powerful, because it motivates you to do all that you have in front of you. Because if you really believe that with your work you can achieve your goals in life, you begin to understand that everything you want to achieve depends on you.

I truly believe that I can do anything that I want to do, as long as I put in the necessary effort to achieve it.

Between what you are now and what you want to become, there is only a finite amount of work.

Let’s go back to implement algorithms.

Solving competitive programming problems is one of the things that frustrates me the most, but I love it at the same time. Well, not finding a solution or an appropriate algorithm becomes a real headache, so you have to investigate and study the algorithm or method with which you try to solve the problem. In the end you end up learning a solution that would never have occurred to you but that is now part of you and really broadens your perspective of how to solve similar exercises. So, after frustration comes the pleasure of understanding and solving the problem.