Skip to main content

The Controlling Forces That Direct Your Life

 Ultimately, everything we do in our lives is driven by our fundamental need to avoid pain and our desire to gain pleasure; both are biologically driven and constitute a controlling force in our lives.

We will do far more to avoid pain than we will to gain pleasure. Pain is the greater motivator in the short term.

To get what you want in your life, you have to figure out what stops you. Whenever you procrastinate, it’s because you think that taking action would be more painful than doing nothing or not taking action. Conversely, sometimes if you procrastinate for too long, it reverses on you! For example, if you keep putting something off (like a term paper or your taxes), you may get to a point the night before it’s due where you start to think that not doing it will be more painful than doing it. And then all night long, you experience the pain of getting the job done.

You must learn to control the motivating forces of pain and pleasure.

How can you use this understanding? At any moment in time, you must realize that your reality is based on whatever you focus on. In other words, whatever you focus your attention on is what is most real to you. 


If you are avoiding anything in your life or if you’re sabotaging your success in any area, it’s because you are experiencing approach/avoidance. You have a mixed set of associations about pain and pleasure. You think that by doing something (e.g. getting into a relationship), you will gain more pleasure, but at the same time, you think it might mean pain (e.g. the relationship might end). So as soon as you start to make progress, you sabotage it. 

If you want to change this once and for all, you have to decide right now that you control the focus of your mind. If you’re not following through, all you have to do is focus on “What’s the pain I’m going to have if I don’t do this?” instead of focusing on the pain you might experience from taking the action. You also have to focus on what pleasure you will experience when you do follow through. You must change what you link pain and pleasure to in order to change your behavior.





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

CAN A FIRM ALWAYS SPOT THE NEXT GREAT TRADER?

 No. But a prop firm can tell who has a poor chance to become a CPT. To be good at anything will take everything you have. Not having developed the skills to work hard is a turn-off. Trading is a skill learned by doing, not just by reading a lot, theorizing, or the faux art of “paper trading.” THE PROS AND CONS OF RECRUITING EXPERIENCED TRADERS Loyalty is a good thing to a point, but it cannot trump logistics and reality. losing money should really bother you. If I am negative three days in a row, I spend a long evening on my couch with a bottle of red wine and comfort food. As traders, we can all recite the memorable line from Wall Street: “A man looks in the abyss, there is nothing staring back at him. At that moment he discovers his character. That keeps the man out of the abyss.”  Traders don’t talk about how they want to trade, what they want to read about trading, or how they wish they could talk about trading. Traders trade, read about trading, and talk about trading.
Post a Comment
Read more

Reading the Tape

 Dr. Steenbarger, aka the godfather of modern trading psychology, wrote: “My experience is that an understanding of (and ability to read) order flow is one important factor that separates the older, successful generation of day traders from the newbies who only know simple chart patterns and indicator readings.” continue working on the skill of reading the tape and to sell the stock on the offer when the tape showed weakness. “Reading the tape must be learned through personal experience and long observation.” keep in mind that nothing can top experience. Don’t give up. It is not always this easy to Read the Tape. But there are plays where it really is simple. And reading the tape will offer pattern recognition plays that you can exploit. Overcoming a Confirmation Bias We all fight confirmation bias. But it will harm our performance if we do not overcome it. Let the tape talk to you. And use online vehicles like StockTwits and your peers sitting next to you to gain second ...
Post a Comment
Read more
 All great leaders in every walk of life are highly sexed, but they follow the habit of controlling their sex desires, switching them into a driving force behind their occupation. The person who has self discipline understands the emotion of sex, respects it, and learns to control and transmute it into contructive activities. Q: Just what damage is there in over-indulgence of sex? A: The greatest damage is that it depletes the source of man's greatest driving force, and wastes, without adequate compensation, man's creative energy. Controlled sex supplies the magnetic force that attracts people to one another. It is the most important factor of a pleasing personality. It gives quality to the tone of voice and enables one to convey through the voice any feeling desired. It serves, as nothing else can serve, to give motive power to one's desires. It keeps the nervous system changed with the energy needed to carry on the work of maintaining the body. It sharpens the imagination...
Post a Comment
Read more