- You can have virtually anything you want, but you can’t have everything you want.
- Life is like a giant smorgasbord of more delicious alternatives than you can ever hope to taste. So you have to reject having some things you want in order to get other things you want more.
- Some people fail at this point, afraid to reject a good alternative for fear that the loss will deprive them of some essential ingredient to their personal happiness. As a result, they pursue too many goals at the same time, achieving few or none of them.
- In other words, you can have an enormous amount: much, much more than what you need to have for a happy life. So don’t get discouraged by not being able to have everything you want, and for God’s sake, don’t be paralyzed by the choices. That’s nonsensical and unproductive. Get on with making your choices.
Archives of “happiness” tag
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Synthesized happiness (sour grapes)
- By cutting off that possibility (or imposing a self-restriction on my flexibility), my psychological immune system gets triggered to synthesize happiness.
- My non-conscious processes immediately ‘downgraded’ the idea of trend continuation (if I can’t get on, the trend must be bad), and boosted the idea that the trend will end.
Between Theory And Fear
Hell tortures you to stop learning.
George Soros is setting up institutions to study the failure of economic thinking. They have succeed in demonstrating failure, he said this afternoon at the CEU in Budapest, but not in discovering what to do about it.
The source of the problem, he explained, is relying too much on theory, on knowledge, and not on how our not knowing what to do makes us act in ways that change the world, which world we don’t see because we expect it to conform to our theories. We need to be able to discard our theories when they are proven wrong, and we need to understand that no general theory is enough, because our actions are constantly changing the world we need to respond to and understand.
So I said to him after his talk:
– You have divided human activity in two parts, theory, and manipulation. Theory doesn’t work, and manipulation of markets is based on crowd behavior, that is, fear. But since ancient Greece, the parts to human activity have been divided into not two, but three: you have left out practical action.
Practical action differs from manipulation, fearfully following and leading each other, in that its end is making learning easier. It’s purpose is outside of itself, in the part of life where we learn, where we find beauty, what makes life good.
Why not establish institutions that study how economic relations are practical: what forms of cooperation lead to a life of learning and freedom from manipulation, and which don’t. And study how to make the transition from the present institutions based entirely on greed and fear to the kind we need to have. Do you understand?
– I have studied maximization of happiness.
– No that’s not what I mean. Counting results of fear based behaviors: doing that is living still in the world of the theoretical and the manipulative. We need to study how to cooperate, study what forms of cooperation help us learn to make our lives better.
Let’s go, says George Soros assistant, urging him as she has been doing for the last few minutes as we talked. OK, I say, I tried. You remember me, right?
– Yes, he nods his head.
I’d asked him for a job the day before when I saw him walking down the street from the University to his hotel.
Practical necessity. I need to get out of this hell of Budapest, this place putting pressure on me not to learn.
People say it is difficult to diagnose the political problems of our times, but I don’t see the difficulty. We’re together in this hell trapped between theory and fear.
Apprasing Your Trading Relationship To Pride- 10 points
1.Does your self-esteem rise and fall with your latest trading ?
2.Have you ever taken a trade just to prove your ability as a trader ?
3.Do you brag about your winning trades to others ?
4.Do you try to hide your losing trades from others ?
5.Do you ever make up false stories about your trading to impress others ?
6.Do you worry about what other people think of your as trader ?
7.Make an honest self-assessment of your trading.
8.Complement yourself and give yourself credit when you do something right.
9.When you make a mistake or do something that doesn’t serve your trading ,plan how you will correct this tomorrow or in the future.Say to yourself ,”That’s not like me.I can do better.”
10.Notice your improvement and commit to doing better each day ,week ,month ,and year
A Trading Psychology Checklist
How do you know if your trading psychology problem is really just about trading or is a sign of larger problems? Here is a quick checklist:
A) Does your problem occur outside of trading? For instance, do you have temper and self-control problems at home or in other areas of life, such as gambling or excessive spending?
B) Has your problem predated your trading? Did you have similar emotional symptoms when you were young or before you began your trading career?
C) Does your problem spill over to other areas of your life? Does it affect your feelings about yourself, your overall motivation and happiness in life, and your effectiveness in your work and social lives?
D) Does your problem affect other people? Do you feel as though others with whom you work or live are impacted adversely by your problem? Have others asked you to get help?
E) Do you have a family history of emotional problems and/or substance use problems? Have others, particularly in your immediate family, had treated or untreated emotional problems?
If you answered “yes” to two or more of the above items, consider that you may not be alone. More than 10% of the population qualifies with a diagnosable problem of anxiety, depression, or substance abuse. Tweaking your trading will be of little help if the problem has a medical or psychological root. A professional consultation if you answered “yes” to two or more checklist items might be your best money management strategy.
3 Thoughts On Freud And Trading
1) We internalize our sense of self from our significant relationship experiences.Relationships serve as a kind of psychological mirror, by which we can experience ourselves through others. If our relationships are positive and healthy, we’re more apt to internalize a positive sense of self. It’s only a small step from this insight to the realization that we have a relationship with *all* of our life activities. We experience ourselves through our trading: over time trading without an edge and without proper risk control virtually ensures that our trading will take a personal toll.
2) We defend ourselves against sources of anxiety. These defense mechanisms may keep us from becoming anxious, but they often are maladaptive and create problems in social and work situations. If we’re feeling inadequate or vulnerable, we might defend against these feelings by jumping into trades or by avoiding markets altogether. What we do to manage our feelings often is the opposite of what we need to do to properly manage our money and positions.
3) We tend to replay conflicts in past relationships in our current relationships. These unresolved problems reappear in different situations until we find resolution. Many trading problems occur when we act out our needs for recognition and self-worth in our trades. The trader who breaks rules when trading and takes undue risk often is needing the markets to provide desired emotional experiences, not just profits. To the degree that we act out our personal issues in markets, we can’t be fully focused on those markets.
A summary of Freud’s view would be the dictum that those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it. It is our repetitive patterns across situations of uncertainty and gain/loss that can take us away from doing what we know to be best.
Do Not Search for Happiness in Markets
The search for happiness has a Heisenbergian aspect: the more certain you are about what you want, the less happy you will be attaining it. It seems to happen unexpectedly, and often only in hindsight.
There is also an “aspergian” aspect: like Viktor Frankl’s “The doors of happiness open outward”. I take this to mean searching and engaging with the world (rather than perpetual introspection), but it could also be the joy in helping others (as risky as it may be).
In markets it is very hard to find happiness, and it is probably foolish to look there. A good source of unhappiness, however, is limit orders. You place them with great hope and the market runs away and leaves you behind. Or you get filled and then it takes you way down. Or you’re overjoyed to finally get out with a modest profit, only to find you sold too soon and missed the big one*.
*Holding losers long and selling winners short: the hardest thing not to do.
Top 10 list from billionaires as to be successful
1. Figure out what you’re so passionate about that you’d be happy doing it for 10 years, even if you never made any money from it. That’s what you should be doing.
2. Always be true to yourself.
3. Figure out what your values are and live by them, in business and in life.
4. Rather than focus on work-life separation, focus on work-life integration.
5. Don’t network. Focus on building real relationships and friendships where the relationship itself is its own reward, instead of trying to get something out of the relationship to benefit your business or yourself.
6. Remember to maximize for happiness, not money or status.
7. Get ready for rejection.
8. Success unshared is failure. Give back — share your wealth.
10. Successful people do all the things unsuccessful people don’t want to do.
What would you add to the “Billionaire’s Secrets” List?
Doubt everything.Find your own light
These were the last words of Buddha ,in the Theravada tradition.The title Buddha means ‘Enlightened one ‘ or ‘Awakened One’.In Buddhism ,the Buddha refers to Siddhartha Gautama,born in Lumbini in modern Nepal.According to most traditions ,he lived many lives before coming to our present world era.Born a prince ,at the age of 13 he was escorted out of the palace.Buddha came across the ‘four sights ‘ :an old crippled man ,a diseased man ,a decaying corpse and finally an ascetic.Gautama realized that age ,disease ,death and pain were inescapable ,and that the poor would always outnumber the rich.However ,even if one was wealthy ,everyone shared age ,disease ,death and pain.Neither money nor peace can relieve people from fear and anxiety ,or lead them to ultimate happiness.
Departing from the palace and wearing rags ,Gautama studied meditation ,becoming an ascetic in his search for enlightenment.He found that the true liberation from worry could be attained only by reaching a state of absolute tranquillity and enlightenment.Buddhism had evolved into three major schools of teaching ,and its peaceful and forgiving tenets have influenced later religions.
After 45 years of teaching ,the Buddha passed into Parinirvana ,the state of Nirvana attained at death.in his last sermon ,he encouraged his disciples to diligently ‘doubt everything ‘and seek the truth ,not holding on to that which is impermanent.
Against Quantification
Reading through Linchpin by Seth Godin advocates getting away from the quantified.
We measure the quantified because we can. But we should create the unquantified because it’s so rare. If you can quantify it, then probably someone before you figured out a why to grind it out. And if you can grind it out, someone can grind it out cheaper than you can. On the other hand, the really valuable stuff, the stuff we pay a lot for, is unquantified. Things like creating joy or security or happiness. No easy measurements for those, thus they are art, and art is always worth more than the predicted.