elepet,
>>"One matter which I have not seen discussed much here or over at RT is that which Douglas calls basic "beliefs". From my personal experiences this seems to be the key, and i have not done very well in altering these."<<
You brought up a good point. Since I haven't read Mark's new book, I'm just going to discuss from my personal experience in battling with my "beliefs".
For a long time in the early days, I've had a hard time making money. Since so many books I read all stated that trading is very difficult and only a small percentage of people could really cut it; subconsciously, I might have created a mental "barrier" for making an xxx amount of dollar. Every time I succeeded in achieving an xxx amount of dollar, I would find a way to give it all back! Fear of success?
This, I believe, is a psychological barrier that is ingrained in our brain due to our childhood upbringing. My development of self-identity might have included some self-doubt on my own ability. How did my self-doubt crept in? Now, I could go into detail and told you my childhood history... but I don't think that is necessary. I believe our own history of ups and downs bring us to where we are. Where we are, unfortunately, carry our self-image that included our self-imposed limitation of what we can do. These self-imposed limitation is essentially a part of our own personal belief system. Am I making sense here?
So, whenever we were doing something that went beyond our self-imposed limitation, we automatically back-pedaled and returned to our comfort zone. Boy, do I sound cliche here? <g>
So, in order to break thru that mental barrier, there have to be some major event in our life that forced us to reconsider our own self-image and its self-imposed limitation. I finally got my break when one of the stock I have totaled conviction took off! Normally, I would have held on to the stock (due to paralyzed greed?) and rode it back down without the huge profit (due to my own self-imposed limitation?) for which I had done several times before this one. But it was with pure luck that I needed to sell the stock with the huge profit to buy another stock.
It took me several days to realize that I actually took a huge profit (my first big one) on the one stock I had conviction in. This realization had a very strong impact on my self-image and its self-imposed limitation (especially when the stock in question went back down below my entry point later on). This single event was the turning point from where I started making money consistently every year. This was the point where my self-imposed limitation (or belief) was broken.
Even before this event, I've read self-help books about "thinking big" with no avail. My self-imposed limitation was so deeply ingrained that it was very hard for me to get out of it. I was LUCKY that I got out the way I did. My deep conviction on that one stock (I did loaded up quite a bit on it) gave me my opening break and my deep conviction of another stock gave me the second break for selling. There were also my ignorance of the dangerous that I was placing myself in by loading up on that one stock. Regardless, luck or not, my self-imposed limitation was broken!
This is NOT to say everyone has to go out and risk everything to break out their mental barrier. Looking back, I wouldn't do it again. It was very foolish and reckless. But I got lucky. It was also around the time that I started my journey to develop my disciplined ego. And from the new found self-awareness and self-image, I am able to keep my profit and grow from there.
Anyone has their own personal war story? Let's hear it!
Cheers!
MS |
