We're continuing the application of Mark Douglas' Fundamental Truths about trading applied to life. But starting today, we're going to expand beyond the original five Douglas shared, pulling more "truths" from Douglas' book Trading in the Zone.
Truth #6: The Market Does Not Cause Your Emotional Pain. Your Beliefs Do.
According to Douglas, the market is just moving. Your fear, hesitation, revenge trading, and refusal to exit come from your beliefs about being right, your fear of loss, your fear of missing out, your need for certainty, and/or Ego attachment.
Charts are not inherently stressful. Price movement is not inherently offensive. Your mind assigns meaning. One trader sees a pullback and thinks "opportunity." Another sees the same pullback and thinks "disaster." That difference is psychological, not market-based.
According to Dr. Julis Torelli, this is how this same principle applies to life:
Your Suffering Comes Less From What Happens and More From What You Add to What Happens
Much of life is raw fact before story:
• A text was not returned
• A business deal fell through
• A symptom appeared
• Someone looked away
• A plan changed
Then the mind rushes in:
• "I am being rejected"
• "I am failing"
• "I am unsafe"
• "Everything is collapsing"
Most human suffering is not just pain. It is pain plus argument.
The gap between event and interpretation is real, but in practice it is almost instantaneous. The interpretation arrives fused with the event as if they are one experience. The gap must be slowed down enough to become visible. This is what contemplative practice, therapeutic work, and somatic awareness do. They slow the fusion enough that you can see the event and the story as two separate things.
Sean here:
I love this line: "Most human suffering is not just pain, it is pain plus argument."
How true is that?
The story we tell ourselves about any situation becomes our distorted version of "reality." We essentially argue with what is simply a fact. An occurrence. A thing. We assign meaning to something where no version of this meaning exists in anyone else's version of reality. Of course, this doesn't mean that everyone else's reality is right and yours is wrong. It simply highlights the folly of assigning meaning to something that has no intentions -- good or bad. It just is.
My PnL says nothing about me. I am not who you or my credit score think I am.
My PnL is what it is. I am who I am. That's it.
We'd all be so much better off if we could all just read facts as they are without assigning meaning to them and judgments about who we are and the character we each possess.
