Quote from MaxMin:
Recognizing the truth is not the same thing as being true to the truth. Being true to the truth requires action to align your position to the truth of the market. The time between recognition and action is the level of your flexibility. }
There is an ancient Chinese expression that translates closely to : a thought once spoken is a lie. What it means is that anything we percieve is in fact percieved through our perception, duh. We all have a" perceptual warp" that is unique to each of us formed by our life experiences up to the moment. These experiences determine what things must be or have to be in order to reinforce our reality, what we know the world to be, we think it's the world's reality but it's really our interpretation of the world. Without some sort of resolution of events into this reality framework we would sink into the quicksand of the unknown, FEAR. The human ego appears to be rather unique in it's horror of the different or unknown and is as a result very determined to rigidly enforce a comfortable known structure at the very moment it should be relaxing and letting go into expansion, NONFEAR. An irony considering that very probably no creature is born better equiped. I digress.
"Recognizing the truth is not the same thing as being true to the truth"
Humans possess a duality of perceptual modes, an emotional instrument and an intellectual instrument, this is projected onto all human endeavour. An actor playing Hamlet on a stage in front of 2k people has to be totally engaged in the role , giving himself over to it ( emotional instrument) and at the same time fully aware of the fact that he is on a stage with an audience of 2k people ( intellectual instrument). He is engaging both of these awarenesses simultaniously. Successful market players know the mkt is an emotional characteristic and must be dealt with via an intellectual characteristic. This is not an easy point to arrive at, if you are there you understand it if not you are on the road. This is responsible for the warm fuzzy feeling quants strive for, they attempt to preclude that which the mkt really is, emotional behavior, doesn't mean they don't get it right looking for returns to a mean. They are however generally on the short side of Paretos rule, putting up huge capital to gain small % returns, whereas the cognicenti employ the opposite strategy.
Disclaimer: I'm a shade over the top with a nice dinner and some port that's older than I am or I probably wouldn't even be writing this, do hope it make sense to somebody though.