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"Do I really look like a guy with a plan? You know what I am? I'm a dog chasing cars. I wouldn't know what to do with one if I caught it! You know, I just... do things.”
That saying, have a plan and trade the plan. I think Im having a moment here because it all just seems so ridiculously funny that we are all so harsh with ourselves for not following 'the plan'. Sometimes we get so caught up in the story (the plan) of what our indicators are indicating and the nonstop mindful chatter which fools us into believing we know whats going on that we overlook the most important thing: What is price actually doing? Its right there you just have to see it.
At the end of the day we are all just dogs chasing cars and occasionally one latches onto a bumper and becomes a legendary dog. Most of the other dogs get squashed. Dont be one of those dogs. Catch the car and be careful of those tyres
Read something Mel Robbins said which I found interesting. Paraphrasing:
Motivation is garbage . You will never feel like doing the things that are tough or difficult or uncertain or scary. The key is to stop hesitation or waiting for the right 'feeling'.
The moment you hesitate your brain is alerted to this new condition and magnifies what you are perceiving to be a threat. It immediately goes into protection mode because that what it is designed to do - stop anything that might hurt you.
So according to her, hesitation is the problem. I agree.
I want to share something I wrote in my diary the other day. There was a profound moment for me a few months ago but Ive never really been able to properly express it in words until I heard Neale Walsch say it with great fluency.
Paraphrase:
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We try mediation and mindfulness and law of attraction and various techniques but nothing seems to be working! How long does not having what you want ...have to go on for?
It goes on for as long as you keep saying that you do not want what you already have.
If you want what you have then ultimately you have what you want!
But if you keep saying that you don’t want to experience what you currently have then you are denying the very gift that makes your goals possible. You are literally pushing away the very conditions and circumstances that are giving you the perfect opportunity to demonstrate and experience what it is you wish to have.
What you resist – persists. What you look at disappears. That is it ceases its illusory form once you become aware of it.
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To explain this another way. I went through a very dark phase and a big contributing factor was near the start of my trading journey. What I didn’t see at the time was the gift I was being given (which I am now grateful for but wasnt at the time). Because when you get to a place of utter hopelessness, its a forest fire that has burned your entire mental landscape leaving you standing alone and isolated amongst the charred ruins of everything you once thought you were. From this perspective you find out what really matters in life (family for me) . You ask yourself how you got here and you realise that question doesn’t matter anymore because the past doesnt matter. You can recreate yourself any way you want. The choice is yours. You start to understand that pain is a gift. It becomes a birthing process. It’s an announcement that new growth is occurring.
In relation to trading, one of the things I battled with was the constant losing. I was demanding a different set of results than what I was actually getting and this cause huge internal conflict. I just sat back one day and gave up. I sat there looking at the charts and told myself this is impossible. Borrowing a saying from deadpool: I had reached fuckit. This was a gift in disguise because now I had perspective. I was still new to trading and my little illusion of how easy trading was going to be, evaporated, and I got to see the true nature of this profession. I came to understand how integral losing is in trading and how unnecessary the associated emotions are.
Im kinda glad I learned that lesson early on. But more importantly is showed me that whenever I feel anger and discomfort it is because Im not in tune with something and I need to readjust my expectations.
Im not to sure where Im going with this post and Im starting to ramble so Ill sign off with a saying, dont know where it comes from:
Lord grant me the patience of the devil and the wisdom of the serpent.
Four monks decided to meditate silently without speaking for two weeks. By nightfall on the first day, the candle began to flicker and then went out.
The first monk said, "Oh, no! The candle is out."
The second monk said, "We are not supposed to talk"
The third monk said, "Why must you two break the silence?"
The fourth monk laughed and said, "Ha! I'm the only one who didn't speak."
The four monks have each broken their silence for different reasons:
The 1st monk was compelled to talk about his distraction (he could have just re lit the candle).
The 2nd monk was more worried about rules than the meditation itself.
The 3rd monk let his anger at the first two rule him.
The 4th monk was sidetracked by his ego.
Which one do you practice being?
There is a 5th option. Had there been a 5th monk he could have just sat there and simply maintained his silence. But if he had, in all likelihood, the other 4 would've probably continued to argue and not even noticed his silence. Could you be that 5th monk? Many people feel that If they are doing something that no one notices, then what is the point of doing it at all. They believe that the reward is in the recognition, not the effort.
The paradox of Choice: Free Will vs Fate.
You are who you are because of the choices you make, yet you can not succeed without external forces, such as friends, family, enemies, and random circumstance influencing your path.
The debate of Free Will vs Fate is a paradox because both sides are correct.
Took dog for walk. Thought about a mobius strip and correlation to trading (don’t ask. I’m weird).
You are determined. Commited to this path (trading). Its hard but you have methods of distraction. Positive affirmations, catchy quotes, popular life coaches telling you how to think in a way that guarantees abundance and prosperity. If we persist and out-stubborn reality then the effort will eventually produce positive results.
Its not true. You are stuck on a Möbius strip. Darkness at the edges where you daren’t go..
How do you get off? To answer that you need to ask yourself how you got on in the first place.
Go straight to the pain and start by asking yourself what the most aggravating thing is about trading? For me it was losing a trade. Here is why:
I felt like a loser. Losing made me feel powerless. I felt embarrassed that I got it so wrong. I am highly competitive and losing made me feel boxed in, cornered, which in turn led to anger and aggression. Life taught me to fight or die but the market is superman with nunchukkas. It took trading for me to see one of the many pre programmed responses was a fight response. The feeling of powerlessness is terrifying.
You can be positive affirmationed up to the eyeballs but lurking just at the very edge of your perception is a looming darkness waiting to consume you at the first show of weakness. My belief was that if I could just read more positive stuff and put out higher frequencies the universe would get me out this hellhole and away from that darkness.
Didnt happen.... that damn Möbius strip had me. I realised that I was at war with myself. The darkness was me. The one pretending that everything was cool was the avatar and he was the weakling, the sucker, the crowd pleaser, the little bitch that cried every time something went wrong. Fuck that guy. I ditched the pretence and embraced my darkness. I went to all the hard places. All the embarrassing places. All the mistakes and regrets and enemies and hate....I went straight to them all and dived into the stink. I was having none of it any more. Here I am do your worst! As it turned out, facing the darkness put it into the light revealing nothing but smoke and mirrors.
What I believe the answer is for you:
To progress takes more than trying to out think the situation. You have to reflect deeply on who you are and why you think the way you do. What are these patterned responses and why do they overwhelm logic and reason? Your enemy is a chemical precursor to an emotion which gets all up in your face before you can do anything about it. You see, your conscious awareness is the last one to be notified of this event so throwing your toys out the cot is just a cute performance. If you continue to automatically react (you have a choice not to), then you are no better than a monkey dancing to an accordion. If you want to be free of the accordion, you have to observe and accept. No thinking your way out of it. When the emotion presents itself, you must remember that is the accordion playing a tune waiting for you to dance. You have the choice to be still and simply listen. Do it enough times and you will give yourself the freedom to play whatever tune you want!
And eventually that damned mobius strip goes poof and disappears and you will find yourself falling. Thats when you learn to fly
I wanted to go back and watch a video you guys posted a while back that talked about neuroplasticity. I believe it was in this thread and I think it's either one of these two links - unfortunately neither is available anymore.
