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The Two Arrows of Life
Today at a Glance
- The Parable of the Two Arrows: "In life, we cannot always control the first arrow. However, the second arrow is our reaction to the first. The second arrow is optional."
- Viktor Frankl, the Austrian philosopher and Holocaust survivor renowned for his contributions to existential psychology, has a brilliant framing for this: "Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response."
- To create the space and move forward after a negative event: Pause, Reset, and Choose.
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When I was playing baseball at Stanford, the coaches had a metric they liked to track for pitchers called the Compound Mistake.
The idea was simple:
After a bad on-field event happens (a hit, walk, error, or hit batter), what did the pitcher do next? Did he let the bad event spiral out of control, or did he control the situation and get the next batter out?
It took me many years to realize that the Compound Mistake was actually a wonderful metaphor for life: We can't always control the first bad event, but we are in control of how we let it impact us going forward.
I recently came across a beautiful Buddhist teaching that brings this idea to life: The Two Arrows.
The Parable of the Two Arrows
The Buddha once asked his student, "If a person is struck by an arrow, is it painful?"
The student nodded, yes.
The Buddha then asked, "If a person is struck by a second arrow, is that even more painful?"
The student again nodded, yes.
The Buddha then explained, "In life, we cannot always control the first arrow. However, the second arrow is our reaction to the first. The second arrow is optional."
Avoiding the Second Arrow
The first arrow is the negative event that hits our lives.
This is the uncontrollable chaos that we may find ourselves thrown into from time to time:
- The death of a family member or dear friend
- A job loss that takes our financial situation from good to bad
- Health problems that impact those closest to us
- Relationship struggles with someone who once felt like our rock
- A critical decision that starts to go awry
Inevitably, we all encounter chaos, pain, challenges, and complexity that threaten to derail us—that threaten to take us out of the game.
The first arrow is impossible to avoid. It hits and it hurts.
The second arrow is governed by our response to the first—and as the parable teaches us, being struck by the second arrow is entirely within our control.
Our reaction and response controls the direction and force of the second arrow:
- If we attach ourselves to the pain of the first arrow, continue to think all of the negative thoughts it brought about, repeat the patterns of our past, dwell in the pain, and bemoan our bad luck, we send the second arrow hurtling straight into our open wound.
- If we pause, breathe, give ourselves a moment to reset, and choose a balanced response, we send the second arrow falling feebly to the ground.
Viktor Frankl, the Austrian philosopher and Holocaust survivor renowned for his contributions to existential psychology, has a brilliant framing for this:
"Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response."
Our power is in the space that we can create between stimulus and response. Creating that space is the key to avoiding the second arrow.
To create the space and move forward after a negative event:
- Pause: Our immediate reactions are almost always emotional, and we make bad decisions in the heat of emotion. Force a pause (whether it's seconds, minutes, hours, or days) before reacting.
- Reset: Allow yourself to feel the pain of the first arrow, but remind yourself that you are in control of the second one. Give yourself that power.
- Choose: With a more balanced perspective, choose your response.
As Frankl famously said, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
Staying In The Game
As my baseball coaches knew, if you just focus on the next batter, on executing the next pitch, you can avoid further damage and stay in the game.
And that's the beauty of it, really—sometimes in life, all you really need to do is just stay in the game long enough to let positive compounding do its thing.
So the next time you encounter an uncontrollable negative event in your life—when you're struck by that painful first arrow—consider the parable of the two arrows.
The first arrow may have hurt, but the second arrow is always optional.
Create a space for you to choose your response and send that second arrow straight into the ground.
