I'm going to write the next few tips on topics that might press your buttons. They'll help you find your hotspots and help you discover how you sabotage yourself. I've been reading a wonderful little book by Jerry Stalking entitled, Laughing with God. In that book the following dilemma is brought up, and here I'm going to rewrite the conversation to make it pertinent to trading/investing.
I'm going to do the next few tips on topics that might press your buttons - find your hotspots and help you discover how you sabotage yourself.
Imagine that you are "Infinitely Wealthy." That means that if you stopped working today, your passive income would be enough to live on for the rest of your life at your current lifestyle. What would you do? Would you continue to do the same work? Would you work to earn more passive income so that you could raise your lifestyle? Well, suppose you did that and your lifestyle was now ten times as affluent as it is now. Now what would you do? More of the same? Perhaps you'd now work to give to others or to charity?
Once again let's look at the wonderful little book by Jerry Stalking entitled, Laughing With God. Once again, I have no idea whether God was involved in writing the material. However, the statements made are quite useful and stimulating, so that's enough for me. In that book, God mentions, "If you cannot be perfectly content with nothing, you obviously cannot be content with anything."
While this might sound satirical to some of you, remember what we've said before about having, doing, and being. Most people want to have what the good trader has (i.e., the money and success). Some are actually willing to do what the good trader does, taking a bigger step in the right direction. But the real secret is to "be" what the good trader is. And if you want to be happy or content or satisfied with your trading success, then you have to be able to step into those states first. Thus, the statement from God is perfectly logical. If you cannot be happy with nothing (i.e., just BE happy), then you'll have trouble being happy as a result of some sort of doing or some sort of having.
God then goes on to say that, "the moment you focus on anything that you did not have at birth, you are buying into the line that you are somehow incomplete and can be fulfilled from outside of yourself." Later, he goes on to say, "I put you in paradise and thus far you have been expending mass quantities of effort attempting to improve on it." This sort of approach does not work for the reasons I've just described.
God also says that our priorities are backward. That's probably nothing new and it's easy to see in other people, although it's not always so easy to see in yourself. We tend to value what is rare. The fewer people have something, the more valuable it tends to become. In contrast, God suggests that everything worth having is available in abundance. Everything we need is available in the proportion that we need it - things like air, water, light, sunshine, beauty, etc. The most abundant thing we have is uncertainty - and we already talked about how important it is in last month's update. The markets would not be any fun at all if all that existed was certainty. In fact, most people would stop playing. And perhaps I should put playing in italics because playing is what children do that gives them joy. As adults, we're taught to take life seriously and stop the joy.
Children take joy in the simplest things, walking through the woods, taking a deep breath of fresh air, being with someone who is fun, seeing a sunset, or splashing in the rain. Adults tend to ignore all of that wonderment. Instead, we work for money and security and an improved lifestyle.
A long time ago, I had a major goal - to accumulate enough money to pay off my house. At that point, I felt, I wouldn't have to work any more. I knew I still would work, but it would be nice to be in a position in which I didn't have to work. In November 1997, I fully understood the concept of infinite wealth as I explained it earlier in this tip. My passive income was greater than my expenses. Within six months I had became infinitely wealthy. Am I still doing the same things? Yes. Do I feel any different? Not really, except to the extent that I changed a lot about who I was "being" in order to become infinitely wealthy.
In the book Laughing with God, God says, "You have set up a world of false standards which most people cannot attain. Those who do reach the top will readily admit that there is nothing there worth attaining."
Here is an example of this logic that is worth thinking about:
You have a brand new $250,000 car and your neighbors do not have such a car. As a result, you must be more important than they are. Right? You must be good, successful, and important. Yet you don't spend much time joy riding in your $250,000 car because you don't want it to get dirty or damaged - mostly you just drive it a little to show people how important you are.
One day you decide to really get in your car and take it for a long drive. You'll drive 500 miles to a different state. However, when you're driving your new expensive car, you notice that you are tense and upset. Other drivers bother you. High speed driving makes you tense. And during the trip you are in a minor accident. Your car is badly dented and you are miserable. Rather than laugh at the chance occurrence, you act as if it is you who was dented. Your value was in something else - your car. As a result, you've become vulnerable. You've confused yourself with your car, your boat, your house, or whatever.
We have developed a value system in which we feel we earn something through hard work. We don't appreciate "things" unless we have suffered enough to obtain them. Making a difficult sale to an irate customer seems much more valuable than making an easy sale to a happy customer. We might celebrate the former and not think anything at all of the latter. All these values do is lead to hard work and irritation. We work overtime to get it done. Then we must spend time unwinding, usually watching the television with a beer or a cigarette. What happened to simply enjoying life?
We invent substances that the average child would never consume or drink without being told it was "adult" to do so. Substances that I'm talking about include beer, wine, whiskey, coffee, tea, cigarettes, cigars, etc. We then invent "refined" tastes around these substances. Thus, people spend years learning about what a good wine is or what a great cigar tastes like or what's good coffee and what's not. Part of our enjoyment of life seems to be in developing a refined sense of these substances (substances that the average child would never want to consume on their own because they taste awful) and yet we consume them to unwind. Does it make sense to you?
This column, you might begin to wonder, is on peak performance trading tips. What I'm saying might be true, but what does it have to do with good trading? Part of the reason I'm bringing these ideas to your attention is that most good traders that I know of can identify with what I'm talking about. They are into simplicity and the joy of life. That's part of what makes them good traders. And when you can learn to "BE" these things, then you'll find that your trading will improve as a result of just being.
http://www.forexfactory.com/pics/articles/van_tharp.jpg
Van K. Tharp, Ph.D.
TradingEducation.com
I'm going to do the next few tips on topics that might press your buttons - find your hotspots and help you discover how you sabotage yourself.
Imagine that you are "Infinitely Wealthy." That means that if you stopped working today, your passive income would be enough to live on for the rest of your life at your current lifestyle. What would you do? Would you continue to do the same work? Would you work to earn more passive income so that you could raise your lifestyle? Well, suppose you did that and your lifestyle was now ten times as affluent as it is now. Now what would you do? More of the same? Perhaps you'd now work to give to others or to charity?
Once again let's look at the wonderful little book by Jerry Stalking entitled, Laughing With God. Once again, I have no idea whether God was involved in writing the material. However, the statements made are quite useful and stimulating, so that's enough for me. In that book, God mentions, "If you cannot be perfectly content with nothing, you obviously cannot be content with anything."
While this might sound satirical to some of you, remember what we've said before about having, doing, and being. Most people want to have what the good trader has (i.e., the money and success). Some are actually willing to do what the good trader does, taking a bigger step in the right direction. But the real secret is to "be" what the good trader is. And if you want to be happy or content or satisfied with your trading success, then you have to be able to step into those states first. Thus, the statement from God is perfectly logical. If you cannot be happy with nothing (i.e., just BE happy), then you'll have trouble being happy as a result of some sort of doing or some sort of having.
God then goes on to say that, "the moment you focus on anything that you did not have at birth, you are buying into the line that you are somehow incomplete and can be fulfilled from outside of yourself." Later, he goes on to say, "I put you in paradise and thus far you have been expending mass quantities of effort attempting to improve on it." This sort of approach does not work for the reasons I've just described.
God also says that our priorities are backward. That's probably nothing new and it's easy to see in other people, although it's not always so easy to see in yourself. We tend to value what is rare. The fewer people have something, the more valuable it tends to become. In contrast, God suggests that everything worth having is available in abundance. Everything we need is available in the proportion that we need it - things like air, water, light, sunshine, beauty, etc. The most abundant thing we have is uncertainty - and we already talked about how important it is in last month's update. The markets would not be any fun at all if all that existed was certainty. In fact, most people would stop playing. And perhaps I should put playing in italics because playing is what children do that gives them joy. As adults, we're taught to take life seriously and stop the joy.
Children take joy in the simplest things, walking through the woods, taking a deep breath of fresh air, being with someone who is fun, seeing a sunset, or splashing in the rain. Adults tend to ignore all of that wonderment. Instead, we work for money and security and an improved lifestyle.
A long time ago, I had a major goal - to accumulate enough money to pay off my house. At that point, I felt, I wouldn't have to work any more. I knew I still would work, but it would be nice to be in a position in which I didn't have to work. In November 1997, I fully understood the concept of infinite wealth as I explained it earlier in this tip. My passive income was greater than my expenses. Within six months I had became infinitely wealthy. Am I still doing the same things? Yes. Do I feel any different? Not really, except to the extent that I changed a lot about who I was "being" in order to become infinitely wealthy.
In the book Laughing with God, God says, "You have set up a world of false standards which most people cannot attain. Those who do reach the top will readily admit that there is nothing there worth attaining."
Here is an example of this logic that is worth thinking about:
You have a brand new $250,000 car and your neighbors do not have such a car. As a result, you must be more important than they are. Right? You must be good, successful, and important. Yet you don't spend much time joy riding in your $250,000 car because you don't want it to get dirty or damaged - mostly you just drive it a little to show people how important you are.
One day you decide to really get in your car and take it for a long drive. You'll drive 500 miles to a different state. However, when you're driving your new expensive car, you notice that you are tense and upset. Other drivers bother you. High speed driving makes you tense. And during the trip you are in a minor accident. Your car is badly dented and you are miserable. Rather than laugh at the chance occurrence, you act as if it is you who was dented. Your value was in something else - your car. As a result, you've become vulnerable. You've confused yourself with your car, your boat, your house, or whatever.
We have developed a value system in which we feel we earn something through hard work. We don't appreciate "things" unless we have suffered enough to obtain them. Making a difficult sale to an irate customer seems much more valuable than making an easy sale to a happy customer. We might celebrate the former and not think anything at all of the latter. All these values do is lead to hard work and irritation. We work overtime to get it done. Then we must spend time unwinding, usually watching the television with a beer or a cigarette. What happened to simply enjoying life?
We invent substances that the average child would never consume or drink without being told it was "adult" to do so. Substances that I'm talking about include beer, wine, whiskey, coffee, tea, cigarettes, cigars, etc. We then invent "refined" tastes around these substances. Thus, people spend years learning about what a good wine is or what a great cigar tastes like or what's good coffee and what's not. Part of our enjoyment of life seems to be in developing a refined sense of these substances (substances that the average child would never want to consume on their own because they taste awful) and yet we consume them to unwind. Does it make sense to you?
This column, you might begin to wonder, is on peak performance trading tips. What I'm saying might be true, but what does it have to do with good trading? Part of the reason I'm bringing these ideas to your attention is that most good traders that I know of can identify with what I'm talking about. They are into simplicity and the joy of life. That's part of what makes them good traders. And when you can learn to "BE" these things, then you'll find that your trading will improve as a result of just being.
http://www.forexfactory.com/pics/articles/van_tharp.jpg
Van K. Tharp, Ph.D.
TradingEducation.com
