Convincing Ourselves

While going through a wonderful book written by H.E Stanton about the psychology of trading, I came across a simple concept. Dr H.E Stanton himself has had considerable experience as a performance coach and is a clinical psychologist himself. In short, he knows how to apply theory to practice, something that I am very interested in. In one of the chapters, Dr Stanton goes on to discuss the psychology of change, and rather than going full-on theoretical, he discusses a very simple to understand, practical, and from the viewpoint of an academic, unconventional idea. He discusses the model of change as described by Tony Robbins. His choice to use Tony Robbin's ideas, someone who has no academic background of psychology is intriguing. It speaks to Dr. Stanton's pragmatism if anything. The model is simple a) decide what you want b) identify what is stopping you c) associate pain to not changing and pleasure to enable change, d) interrupt the existing pattern e) create a ...

Resilience is a concept almost synonymous with positive psychology and I feel it is important to discuss resilience, given the Covid-19 environment we are in right now. Resilience is of course the ability to bounce back from adversity. Putting yourself together and rising up, after one has fallen down. Resilience is considered an essential quality for soldiers on the battlefield, sports teams, individuals as well as businesses. The reason for this is simple, adversity is inevitable. It is inevitable that a business, organization, individual entrepreneur, or even a non-profit, will through a period of adversity. This adversity can take many forms. It could be due to legislation that changes the industry completely, it could be due to intense competition, a natural disaster perhaps or a macroeconomic situation. It can also be internal, eg a PR error by the CEO, an accounting scandal, and on. Whatever industry one is in, no matter how big or small the business, adversity and h...

It is well understood in psychology that our beliefs, especially those formed in childhood can have a great impact on our behaviour and choices later on in life. Even though Cognitive Behavioral Therapist may not deal with issues from the past, and in certain cases you may not need to, it is well acknowledged that it does occur in traditional psychotherapy as well as literature. With my experience with individuals, I have also come across individuals who are struggling with certain behaviors and choices presently, that stem from beliefs and experiences in early life. Below I will give a fictional account of what that may look like in order to help readers understand how such beliefs can be formed, and how they may be invisible to the individual themselves. Fictional Account: Laura, 35, is a middle manager at a local chain of retail stores. She comes from an upper-middle-class background, and both her parents were immigrants and doctors. Laura had two more siblings. A...

This post is based on a thought I had after listening to Bilal Hafeez on his last appearance on Bloomberg, talking about the impact of the coronavirus on the markets. I am not an expert in finance by any means and Bilal is essentially a veteran of the industry. He discussed what many others before him have spoken about as well. Algorithmic trading is now a massive part of global financial markets and trading. The thinking goes that because machines are doing a lot of trading, it is possible that they will make irrational mistakes and make the market crash eg during the recent Coronavirus incident. Modern Algos: Algorithmic trading is essentially now mainstream. The biggest and most successful of fund of them all is the legendary Madallion fund run by Renaissance Technologies. The fund uses leverage but is capped and not open to outside investors. It is arguably the most successful fund of its size. However, RenTech and its many funds are not the only players. Citadel is als...

There is no magic formula to success. We need to work harder and smarter and then there is luck/chance/right place right time. We can not do much about luck but we can surely work on everything else. There are many people who want to be successful in a certain field, but for some reason cant get themselves to be the best. What can we do? Well, as always I believe it is all about convincing ourselves of various truths and realities that we usually ignore. Step 1-Know what you want The first step to being good at something is to know convince yourself that this is something you want to be good at. I once wanted to do a PhD, but my proposal was never accepted. After getting rejected several times I realized that as much as I wanted to be 'known' as a good academic, it is not something that I really wanted to do. I believe I might not have even finished my PhD as I probably would have gotten depressed in between.  To be good at something, we need to give a lot of effor...

Let us get fit!!! Everyone wants to get fit nowadays. If they are thin, they want to bulk up. If they are fat, they want to slim down. Whatever the issue, no one is really happy with their body. Now I can take the very common 'New Age' concept and say that we should be happy with our body, however sometimes changing our bodies become necessary.I myself was obese and suffered greatly. Many in families had to get heart surgery, because of their lifestyle choices, which included bad eating habits and obesity. However, even when we know that something is bad for us and can actually kill us, we might not change our habits. This is true. Even when smokers known that smoking causes cancer, they know that is long way of and they go for the immediate pleasure and discount the risk. What to do? What to do when you feel you really cannot do anything? your will, your idea of time/delay of pain and pleasure, simply do not let you get through that barrier. The Solution I believe...

One of the most prominent problems in society today is that we feel we need more. If you are a businessman, you need to grow the business. If you are an athlete, you need to win the biggest prize, if you are a student, you have to be the best. This is a result of the hyper-competitive, individualistic, achievement oriented civilization that we have become. There is nothing wrong with that in itself.  The system has given us great athletes, scientific breakthroughs, wonderful companies that have gone on to make our lives better, medication that has saved lives and world leaders that aspire to work for the greater good. However it has also created a society that is forever looking for the next big thing. The next technique, the next product, the next investment, the next goal, the next prize. For sure this is what human beings and the growth mindset is, but does it really make us happy? To be happy, we need to convince ourselves that we are great, lovable and worth indiv...

Why do we enjoy some things and no others? well, there are two reasons. We like to do things that are easy, but not too easy. This depends not only at the task at hand but also to our own ability to do the task. This is why, if we are good at a board game, but its challenging, we get hooked. It is also the same reason why we like to play sports with someone who can challenge us, but is not so much better  than us that we get frustrated. If we are able to convince ourselves that the task at hand is easy, in a challenging sort of way, it will become engaging and to some extent fun as well. We can convince ourselves for this kind of thinking for any task. It can be cleaning the dishes, or even talking a walk. Its fun, because its invigoratingly easy! To repeat, it is not about thinking or hoping that something that is hard becomes automatically easy (if that works for you, good enough) but acknowledging that it is tough, yet fun and challenging. When we say it is ea...

Everything we do starts with a question. How will we get that job? how can we start to get fit? how do I grow my company? There are so many questions we have to deal with regularly and often it seems that we have no answers. This sense of 'not knowing' is a big source of demotivation to get something started in the first place. We get so overwhelmed by the problem, the unknown and the task ahead that we either try to find a short cut, that never works, or we delay our plans further ahead. Days, weeks, months and even years go by before we even take  a step in the right direction. However the reality is that we do know the answers to many questions, problems and issues we face. They might not be perfect solutions, as one cannot always get a perfect answer to everything, but certainly these answers can help us set foot in the right direction. Let us look at common issues one by one. How do I lose weight? the answer to this question is not rocket science and not beyond the...

One of the reason why many flock to therapists, read self help books or go into depression is because they cannot get what they want or life simply did not turn out as they had hoped. They prayed, meditated, wished, kept a positive attitude, yet nothing materialized. Very often, we expect life to be easy and reflect our own mood. However, every now and then we have to remind ourselves and convince ourselves that life is not meant to be easy. Life is pain, struggle and discomfort, punctuated by moments of happiness and euphoria that make it all worthwhile. Life is about great relationships, with people who matter and yourself. Life is constant discomfort, be it tackling your willpower, going to the gym, having a difficult conversation or realizing a bitter truth. This is life and there is no need to run away. We have to convince ourselves that we have the capacity, strength, resources and the power to deal with life in the best way possible. We all have the ability to go through ...

Everyone truly knows the path to money, health and wealth. There is no secret to it. People have known how to achieve these things since the dawn of time, yet the reason why so many people are searching for the answer is that they are searching for the 'easy answer'. Everyone is truly out there looking for the shortcut to success, fame, wealth, fitness, weight goals, achievements etc. There truly are people who  get lucky and there truly are ways that can get you to your goals quicker, however the underlying principle is hard work, patience and a general positive attitude. We have convinced ourselves that there is a short cut and it is somewhere out there. We look for that short cut all our lives, waste years and years looking for it until others, who go through the pain, the hard work and at the same time, have fun, seem to get all the rewards, slowly but surely, beating us to the goal post, over and over again. Let us look into different areas of life separately and see...

Some times it does get hard to convince oneself of the reality. It gets hard to keep our negative self talk under control or perhaps the loss is so great or the event so emotional, that it makes us question our long held positive beliefs. These are times when people end up at therapy, or get depressed. However there are other ways to manage the most difficult phases in life. As you know, I do not like to give a 'one size fits all solution' to a problem and encourage us to know how to effectively 'convince ourselves' of positive reality, to give ourselves helpful thoughts, in anyway possible, so we can deal with a situation. What I mention below however is not a technique but the most fundamental way of being happy. The best way to remain happy, or to remain positive after a failure, or to remind yourself that your life is still full of love, is to ensure that you have great and loving friends and family around you.  This is the most powerful resource we have as hu...

Overwhelmed! Convincing yourself to stay strong and positive through self talk, visualization etc is all great, but there are times in life we get overwhelmed. A surprise all nigher, a failure, a natural disaster, a death of a relative, even yourself getting hurt, are all realistic scenarios that can overwhelm us and leave us defenseless. Even though we may have remained strong, through eg a daily practice of praying to God, or self talk in general, it is these tough times when we have to be strong. So what to do? what to do when we feel nothing works? Despite our work with the therapists, or reading great self help books, and even taking assertion training, what to do when nothing seems to work!!!!? What to do? Once again, it varies from person to person, and I believe we sometimes cannot use the same tool again and again. However below are some of my suggestions. 1-Don't do anything! Sometimes one is overwhelmed with stress, work or the immediate need of the situation tha...

There are so many times in our lives when someone heckles us, harasses us, cheats us, or trumps all over us. They backbite, scheme, shame us or do any other thing to make us feel like absolutely nothing. The perpetrator is clearly wrong and needs to be taught a lesson but we meek out. Very often its because we are 'nice people', or we do not want to create a scene, and simply do not want any big 'issues' in life. It may be because we do not want to ridicule someone or, very importantly, we don't want others to think bad about us and ruin a relationship Why do we think like that? It may always not be sign of weakness, but very often it can be.  It got me wondering when I had a similar issue recently and I had to convince myself that I could get through this difficult feeling of helplessness. It was a time when I myself had a difficult time even talking to the person who had wronged me After a lot of thinking and finally a self hypnosis session I realized 'I...