Quote from ShoeshineBoy:
You know that's actually quite profound. Most people get in such a rut. And I really think a lot of it has to do with health btw.
snip........
And let me ask this question: how often do you really know what you are doing in life such that it will last decades??? And are you really so friggin smart that you know the end of your life from the beginning??
Most people lead unhealthy lives.
One of the wonderful self-selecting organizations is the Sierra Club and its service project operations. Obviously, because they filter with med exams and med reports to qualify people, you get nice crews to work with. In all the service trips I ran, only one person cheated on the information that I know of. Doing air evacs isn't fun out of the wilderness.
What is more terrific than this self selection, are the minds of these people. Not only do they luv to work and get the job done, they are very mentally active in all sorts of ways. In terms of the six common practices that are recommended for maintaining mental prowess, they always cover the bases.
You ask: "how often do you really know what you are doing in life such that it will last decades???"
It is always a very good thing when the answer pops up.
Warren Buffett epitimizes this in his principal investment principle. By seeking to find investments with this characteristic, he assures that wealth will be built continually.
Everything a person does lasts for decades. The mind epitimizes durability just as Warren Buffet's investments do. Thus his main attraction has alway been getting OPM to run his investment strategy based on durable value.
So how do you wind up asking the question which is so obvious from anyone's personal history? All your life you build your mind through many different aspects of neuroplasticity. Everyone gets the consequences too. More of what happens unconsciously is what makes you what you are and have built over decades.
At 40 you are 1/3 of the way into your most creative period of life. Today you get to become aware of the fact that everything lasts for decades. The 20's and 60's and 70's are similar. The bridge across includes the most creative period (30's through 50's). you get to the midpoint in 5 years and you can think about how everything you do lasts for decades as you get to the midpoint.
You also ask: "And are you really so friggin smart that you know the end of your life from the beginning??"
The nature of competitive plasticity is well established in late teenage when the giant shearing of the unattached synaptic unconnections occurs. In a localizationism sort of way the die was cast for what you are like at the end of your life long ago for you, about 25 years ago, in fact. By the end of teenage, the major "use it or lose it" event has already happened.
In therapy, nowadays, it is common practice to tell the client/patient what is wrong with them. Most people don't have things wrong with them but they still do not know how they work. You dwell in this thread with what you know about and you don't deal with how things work and what the opportunities are to spend the time and energy to realize the potentials that may still remain.
Being smart about living, as you have commented, is missing in ET. We saw the OP get a wake up call by two quotes from a book he may be reading.
Let's say you examine how short term memory becomes long term memory. Then you get to see how what you do lasts for decades. Look at the susanah journal on price only and see her list of consecutive technique failures that led, over four years, to where what she is is now (actually based on decades of what she did) before she got to doing the journal. She has a spot in her mind that does price only by induction (the Black Swan causing principle) and it is surrounded by many locales of failed trading memories. She must see reminders all the time as she trades price only at this point.
Any person coming into trading is almost like a clean slate. ET has no provision for the most significant tool a person uses to learn to trade and to trade as his learning permits. For the most part, the mind is an unknown around here.
One N00b noted recently that he is focusing on reading about trading. He noted that up to last week he could only read 10 pages a day. He is really focusing now and has a stop watch and is making himself read 40 pages a day. A blind person reading using audio techniques reads at 340 words per minute using sound. This person can knock off three books a day.
Learning to trade is a process; a process of building the mind. Odd trader closed off his mind and got a wakeup that he could not see what he couldn't see about himself. Then, he left in the sense that he is not going to keep starting thread after thread anymore. He now knows that improper learning and improper trading has consequences and, I assume, he figured out the consequences last for decades and fit into the category of damage.
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