Was 2018 A Great Year for You? – Part 2

In trading, the best outcome each day is more money in your account. However, if you keep striving for more money, you will never be happy because you will never have all of the world’s money.  A good analogy is relationships. Many times, individuals enter relationships expecting their partner to be “it” for them, meaning to fill all their needs. They are counting on that partner to make them happy and fill all their needs and voids. These relationships inevitably fail because no one is capable of meeting all the needs of another, and new needs are always cropping up. Too much pressure is put on that partner to be “it” for that person. Trading is not all that different. The pressure people put on themselves, with unrealistic expectations, is simply setting them up for failure.

I will never forget a flight I was on to Dubai, watching a Disney documentary called Oceans. It is a fascinating documentary about the world’s oceans and the life within them. While there are many documentaries about the oceans, trust me, you have never seen one like this before; Disney did a great job.

There is a scene in the movie that shows a family of three Walruses, two parents and their offspring. It was just the three of them playing together in a massive body of ocean water. Then, everything began to slow down, the playing stopped and the three came together and just held each other with the young one softly nestled between the parents. They were all floating in their world, just holding each other. At that moment, my world paused as well. It was such a moment of love and family. I realized that all they had their whole life was each other and the natural surroundings they shared, which basically consisted of ice and water. They looked so happy and at peace.

It was at that moment that I asked myself, who has the better life, them or I? After all, I was the one sitting in a metal tube breathing a mixture of jet fuel and oxygen on my way to a city famous for its metal buildings and artificial this and that. Travelling first class on an international flight all of a sudden meant nothing to me. I was the one away from my family and the things in life that are most important to me. I was actually envious of the Walrus family and what they had at that moment. They didn’t care about a good or bad economy, taxes or some economic report. They were not interested in the next iPhone, iPad, iTouch, iPod or the full iLife that so many people are lining up for. Their mood was not shaped by the next up or down tick in the S&P. Money, markets, metal and plastic has absolutely no impact on them at all. Can you imagine a world where your happiness is completely detached from these things? Their world had not been poisoned by the artificial Cycle of It.

Escaping the Cycle of IT

To escape this Cycle of It, I focus on the “Grander Vision” instead of attempting to attain all of the world’s money. This is what allows me to run a simple trading and investing strategy year after year after year. I have not changed one thing about how I make decisions in the trading and investing space. The income from the world of trading allows me to feed my grander vision and not chase after IT. You see, IT never ends, and in the trading world the thought process that accompanies the quest for IT will drain your account and leave your passion and emotion tank empty.

Instead of buying the latest power computer, tap into or discover your grander vision. My grander vision is making a difference in the life of children through programs I am involved in that will end up making a positive difference in the world. That is what I spend some of my free time doing. This just so happens to also allow successful financial decisions to happen, there is no pressure of better numbers and more dollars. Believe me, I see a Ferrari on the road and really like it and want one, but… If I buy one, there will always be the next better one, IT will never end.

Also, keep in mind that I grew up with nothing and lost my mother when I was 15. I appreciate every single day and everything in my life. When I look back and understand what makes me happy, it’s not money or items, it’s love, relationships and the grander vision. I don’t wake up each day excited to trade the markets to see if I can make more money than the day before. What excites me more than anything is seeing a huge smile on a child’s face doing something amazing that they have never done before. Yes, many of these things cost money, which is where the trading strategy comes in, but the focus is the smile, not the money. That’s the last thing to focus on…

The next time you have a few minutes and you are about to tweak that trading strategy because your strategy, while profitable, may not be allowing you to really make IT, understand that IT is a bottomless pIT, if you’re focused on the artificial IT. You are likely chasing something that does not exist. You’re walking east and west trying to find the North Pole. Instead, open your mind to the possibility of a much grander vision that has nothing to do with trading and making even more money. In doing this, you may just find that the grander vision is what will finally allow you to execute your successful strategy with disciplined precision for the rest of your life. More importantly, this grander vision is where you will find the real, attainable IT.

Words of Encouragement

If you are not a consistently profitable market speculator yet, Don’t Give Up! Remember, most of your failures could have been converted into success if you had continued on for a short time longer or made a little more effort. With a positive attitude, you are ready for all the adversity and short term defeat that leads to and is necessary for success. You see, adversity is really a stepping stone requirement along the path to success. Without the positive attitude, adversity, more often than not, leads to failure.

When you eliminate failure as an option and remove all escape routes, you will be surprised how fast you figure out how to succeed. What about Thomas Edison? He attempted to create the electric light bulb only to fail 10,000 times. How did he press on with so much failure? That all depends on how you define failure… He viewed each failure as a very positive step in his quest because with each failed attempt, he was eliminating a way NOT to produce the light bulb. The more times he failed, the closer he was to achieving his goal. The same goes for trading. So often, people give up just as they are about to become consistently profitable. The next time you get discouraged because of a few trades that didn’t work out, think of Edison’s 10,000 bad bulbs and the success that came from those failures. Next, once you invent your light bulb, make sure you spend your life using it to feed your grander vision, not trying to improve IT.

The maze of life is such a gift, so short, and I don’t intend on wasting a second of it. Make each day, each moment, count. For those of you who find the real IT, your true grander vision, and know how you’re going to live an amazing 2018, please send me an email and let me know.

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