my journal 3

[Yamato]

"Chi è 'sto stronzo?"

Ouch... tough practice today at work.

First I met someone in the hallway who didn't greet me. I said "hi" and he ignored me. And that was a tough one. Or rather, good practice for my "learn to deal with frustration" exercises.

Then, two hours later, as I was leaving the bank and going home, and this can only happen in Rome, I crossed three colleagues, whom I didn't know, and one of them whispered to the others "Chi è 'sto stronzo?", which is more or less "who is this dick?" or "who is this asshole?".

Yeah, I am paranoid, so maybe I imagined it, but, being in Rome, I wouldn't be surprised. People in Rome have unparalleled thoughtlessness. I just didn't know this reached... this went as far as people with college degrees. But it does, and I did suspect it all along. It's just that the Romans are a bit... quite a bit more rude than the average Italian, who already sucks anyway.

Whichever it is, that he whispered it or I imagined it, just thinking that I got insulted so heavily is great practice in itself, with accepting that things won't always go my way, and people won't always behave according to my wishes / expectations.

Remember the fact that I got started with this work, because I cannot accept losses and blow out my account as a consequence. And then I realized that I am this way in every field of my life, essentially a "control freak".

In the meanwhile, I've added this incident to what's becoming a very detailed workbook, that now includes:
1) symptoms of stress, post #4261
2) causes of stress, post #4278
3) treatment / prevention of stress - this post

Here is the updated excel file:
View attachment stress_causes-symptoms-cures.xls

Regarding the "treatment / prevention" I would say these are the main points I want to remember:

1. Accept reality and that things / people around will not always behave according to your wishes / expectations
2. change reality as much as possible according to your wishes
3. when you can't change it, avoid as much as possible the people /situation causing you stress
4. Remember that, once you have assessed reality (how things / people work), you will not benefit from thinking about the incident any further
5. Each stressful incident provides good practice for controlling your emotions and your reaction to stressful situations

---

The next revolutionary step, and the way of the future for me, is to see practical examples where putting into practice acceptance of losses leads to better outcomes than being angry about them.

I already have two examples of this:
In trading, once a loss is incurred, you feel urge to 1) trade again in the same long / short direction or 2) not close the position:
if you avoid this, the following trades are more likely to be successful
If you accept failure, you're more likely to be successful after it.

If the child neighbor wakes you up, you would tend to stay up, while feeling the urge to kill him
If you avoid this, and accept your limits/losses (that you can't kill him, and that he has hurt you and will keep hurting you), you are more likely to go back to sleep

This is all wonderful. I can't believe I hadn't realized this before. This is simple math, as clear as math, how useful it is to not have feelings.

I guess a life of frustration wasn't enough to open my eyes. Once again, trading has helped me to do the math, and open my eyes, and see what is profitable not just in trading but also in life.

...and sure enough, as i often do, I have invented something that had already been studied by someone else and which they call "desensitization":
http://www.guidetopsychology.com/sysden.htm

ONE METHOD that has been consistently proven to be effective in the treatment of anxiety and phobias is systematic desensitization. In this procedure, events which cause anxiety are recalled in imagination, and then a relaxation technique is used to dissipate the anxiety. With sufficient repetition through practice, the imagined event loses its anxiety-provoking power. At the end of training, when you actually face the real event, you will find that it too, just like the imagined event, has lost its power to make you anxious.

Originally developed to be administered by a psychotherapist, systematic desensitization has been shown to be effective when self-administered as well, and your greatest gains will come through your own regular practice. The examples utilized here will be for desensitizing yourself to Fear of Flying; you can, however, alter the examples to suit any type of anxiety.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desensitization_(psychology)
http://www.aspca.org/pet-care/virtu...avior/desensitization-and-counterconditioning

Systematic desensitization and counterconditioning are two common treatments for fears, anxiety, phobias and aggression—basically any behavior problem that involves arousal or emotional reaction. When the problem is rooted in how a dog or cat feels about a particular thing, it isn’t enough to just teach him a different behavior—like sit instead of lunge and growl. What’s most effective is treatment that will change the way he feels about something. This treatment will eliminate the underlying reason for the behavior problem in the first place.

To put it succinctly all traders should follow a boot camp that involves desensitization as far as losses. That should be a prerequisite for trading.

Now I've come to this on my own, and realized that I also can benefit from it in my life. I am not sure if I will have to become a person without any feelings whatsoever or if I can limit this to the areas where it is useful, that is to say in hostile environments, like at work, and while trading. Of course, I would not need this with my relatives, at least most of my relatives.

I think I might be able to keep my emotions as far as non-hostile environments. And I am not even saying I have to become "mean" in hostile environment, but simply a person who doesn't get hurt by things not going his way, as I've been so far.

--- more on desensitization ---

This is not exactly what I expected it to be, because it is associated with a treatment that I wasn't thinking of, from what I have read so far, and yet some argue that that part of the treatment is useless and that the only thing needed is "exposure to the feared object":
http://www.guidetopsychology.com/sysden.htm

Although his theoretical assumptions about the role of the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems in extinguishing anxiety were actually erroneous,[2] his Systematic Desensitization program, as a practical application of his theories, proved to be highly successful. In fact, it revolutionized the treatment of neurotic anxiety.

Many researchers have since concluded that “exposure” to the feared object or situation is the critical factor in treatment. Systematic desensitization, some say, merely helps individuals expose themselves to feared situations.[3]

So, in plain language, regardless of why it works, systematic desensitization does work.

More interesting quotes from the same link:

• The effectiveness of systematic desensitization does not appear to depend on the intensity of your anxiety, the duration of your anxiety, or on whether the anxiety was acquired suddenly or gradually.[6]

• Some evidence suggests that systematic desensitization may not be as effective in treating anxieties that could have an underlying survival component—such as fear of the dark, fear of heights, or fear of dangerous animals—as in treating phobias that have been acquired from personal experience.[7]

Just as I said in my previous posts: there is no need, and actually it is not good to cure our frustration / fear / anger related to situations that can cause us permanent damage, but only that from situations that do not cause us permanent damage, such as these clear examples:
1) stoploss being triggered, which actually, more often than not, saves our account
2) losing at chess or some other board game
3) some stranger looking at us in the street
4) someone contradicting us...
5) a dog barking, far away from us

All situations that bothered me very much until now, and yet all without permanent damage to me.

More quotes:

There are three steps in the self-administered systematic desensitization procedure:
1. Relaxation;

2. Constructing an anxiety hierarchy;

3. Pairing relaxation with the situations described in your anxiety hierarchy.

Wow, this is exactly what I have done. Remember my hierarchy of symptoms for different levels of stress? That was the first idea I came up with, and I ranked them all according to level of anxiety:
1) symptoms of stress, post #4261
2) causes of stress, post #4278
3) treatment / prevention of stress - this post

The following systematic desensitization procedures will assume that you have become familiar and proficient with some form of relaxation technique. This could be Progressive Muscle Relaxation, Autogenics, or any other method of inducing a deeply relaxed state of mind. All that matters is that you choose a method of relaxation that is most comfortable for you.

http://www.guidetopsychology.com/pmr.htm

The PMR procedure teaches you to relax your muscles through a two-step process. First you deliberately apply tension to certain muscle groups, and then you stop the tension and turn your attention to noticing how the muscles relax as the tension flows away.

Through repetitive practice you quickly learn to recognize—and distinguish—the associated feelings of a tensed muscle and a completely relaxed muscle. With this simple knowledge, you can then induce physical muscular relaxation at the first signs of the tension that accompanies anxiety. And with physical relaxation comes mental calmness—in any situation.

wow!

Deep Muscle Relaxation

Once you have learned PMR and are familiar with the feeling of muscle relaxation, you can then induce relaxation without even bothering with the tension-relaxation process. All you need to do is use your imagination to think of and then relax the various muscle groups using your cue word(s). Usually this is done by starting at the top of your head and then working down through your body, as if relaxation were being poured over your head and flowing down over all of your body. This process is called Deep Muscle Relaxation.

Then, anywhere, anytime, you can simply perform a quick “body scan” to recognize where in your body you might be holding muscle tension and then, using imagery and your cue word/phrase, you can let it go.

awesome

http://www.guidetopsychology.com/autogen.htm

ALTHOUGH one of the most simple and easily learned techniques for relaxation is Progressive Muscle Relaxation (PMR), autogenics, while requiring considerable time and discipline to learn, has more far-reaching benefits than simple muscle relaxation. Composed of auto- (from the Greek autos, self) and -genous (a suffix meaning produced by, and reflecting the word genesis, creation), the word was chosen by Johannes Schultz,[1,2] a German doctor, to describe his original discovery first published in 1932. Today, autogenics training [3] teaches you to self-produce a feeling of warmth and heaviness throughout your body, thereby experiencing a profound state of physical relaxation, bodily health, and mental peace.

Once you become proficient at it, you can use autogenics to overcome addictions (such as smoking or gambling), change unwanted behaviors (such as nail biting), resolve phobias (such as fear of flying), and mitigate symptoms of physical ailments.[4] If you tend to be a nervous or anxious person, autogenics can help you find an inner place of calmness and emotional peace. If you are a highly sensitive person, with autogenics you can learn to cope with environmental stimulation by dismissing it from your attention rather than feel overwhelmed by it. In fact, you can use autogenics to help overcome just about any psychological or physiological problem; the results will vary according to the severity of the problem and according to your own discipline and confidence.

To maintain your proficiency, practice at least once a day. Some persons prefer going to sleep this way. If you maintain your practice faithfully, you will find that by using only one or two cycles of the final routine you can achieve a pleasant and calm autogenic state under almost any circumstances.

But make no mistake: It takes long, hard practice to master the exercises, and they take you only as far as your own intelligence and desire will allow.

In general, changing unwanted behavior involves three basic steps:
1. To know how ugly the behavior is and how much damage it causes to yourself and to others.
2. To know the damage caused by the behavior.
3. To know the benefits of new and different behavior.

Yeah, I completely understand.

 

[Yamato]

A lot of interesting things on this website, guidetopsychology.com:
http://www.guidetopsychology.com/ucs.htm

The first problem with the unconscious is that it is . . . well, unconscious. That is, by definition the unconscious represents all that is true, but unknown, about ourselves. So how in the world can we talk about something unknown?

The unconscious, therefore, poses a scientific dilemma because it cannot be observed, let alone validated, through scientific research. It’s similar to the dilemma found in sub-atomic physics: the observer interferes with the observation. The unconscious can be understood only indirectly through clinical experience.

One solution to the problem, therefore, is for scientists to reduce their own cognitive dissonance by denying the existence of the unconscious or by not talking about it.



It’s similar to the time at the beginning of modern medical science when some doctors refused to believe that bacteria caused infections. Not being able to see with their own eyes any evidence of “germs,” these men derisively dismissed the whole concept of bacterial infection.

 

[Yamato]

Anyway, to speak about ordinary things, after all these high-quality readings on psychology (cf. previous posts), let's write down today's achievements, as far as anger/frustration control.

First that guy didn't say hi to me in the hallway, and I am not obsessing about it. Which I usually do.

Then these three other guys... one whispered (if I wasn't too paranoid, but I think I heard right), "chi è 'sto stronzo?", and I didn't obsess about this either...

... but the final objective is to not mind for one second. I am still not there.

Then, very interesting experience with a mosquito.

There was a mosquito in the room.

I decided to not be bothered by it.

I got bit a few minutes later.

I didn't scratch it once, and it doesn't even itch any more.

It was much more practical than following these 22 steps:
http://www.wikihow.com/Get-Rid-of-a-Mosquito-Bite

On the other hand, this may do damage to your fingers, the burning thing I mean, which Lawrence of Arabia does in the clip.

Anyway, let's write it one more time: the mosquito bite itching and fear control (when it was in the room and I decided to not mind) was an enormous morale booster. Realizing that the mind is so powerful.

Essentially we should always divide problems, as soon as we encounter them, into these two categories:

1) does it do permanent damage? No, then do not worry about it.

2) does it do permanent damage? Answer yes: then fix it if you can, avoid it, or try to minimize its consequences.

Mosquito bite, dog barking, colleague yawning out loud... no permanent damage. So let it go.

Instead, I used to complain about such things for hours every week.

This is very related to trading, once again.

Because trying to fix things that do not need to be fixed or things that cannot be fixed is the same principle that leads you to turn a small loss, by refusing it, into blowing out your account, either by keeping the trade open or even by doubling up on the losing trade.

 

[Yamato]

This is wonderful. Ever since I started practicing with accepting losses, things not going my way, sources of frustration / anger...

... ever since that, I have been starting to see my day at work as a wonderful opportunity, as a gym where to train, and as a tool that can help me achieve trading profitability.

Impassibility in the face of losses leads to trading profitability.

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Impassibility

im·pas·si·ble (m-ps-bl)
adj.
1. Not subject to suffering, pain, or harm.
2. Unfeeling; impassive.

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/passible

pas·si·ble (ps-bl)
adj.
Capable of feeling or suffering; sensitive: a passible type of personality.

passible (ˈpæsɪbəl)
adj
1. susceptible to emotion or suffering; able to feel

I am now fighting all my upbringing, according to which losing is unacceptable and shameful.

 

[Yamato]

I am on the verge of change. If I can keep going, I will be a new person, who doesn't mind things that used to bother me, offend me and yet that didn't cause me any permanent damage. They just hurt my honor, imaginary bull**** useless concept.

I must not look back and revert to my old ways. It is hard now to resist the urge to hate and demand respect or hit back, the way I used to do all the time. But the fact that resisting these urges is "hard" is a great achievement, because until now it was impossible and inconceivable.

 

[Yamato]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Masaryk

clip downloadable here:
https://archive.org/details/1939RadioNews

Exact clip:
https://archive.org/download/1939Ra...-Ambassador-In-London-On-Poland-Situation.mp3

He sounds extremely wise, concise and it seems written today -- instead he said it before the war started.

http://taylorempireairways.com/2009/09/for-we-are-called/
2. Czech Ambassador on Poland situation 00:50



This quote from the web site is better than nothing, but they're skipping quite a few good lines.

Also, Churchill was quite predictive and a good analyst here:

These two are the best analyses of the situation I've heard so far, or at least the most predictive ones.

More great wisdom from Czech Ambassador Jan Masaryk here, starting from minute 6:
https://archive.org/download/1938RadioNews/1938-09-23-CBS-News.mp3

 

[Yamato]

how to play the chart game

OK, let us play yet another chart game, and remember that our objective is not to win, but to lose with the right mind frame. As I read somewhere, "wins take care of themselves". It is losses you have to worry about. In detail, I have to do these things:

1) set a stoploss and abide by it, as soon as price reaches it, without hesitation
2) as you exit the trade when stoploss gets hit, don't display any body language indicating pain / anger (this also means no underlying emotional causes of that body language)
3) while doing both of the above, still try to pick profitable trades

That's all. The task is to try your best, while not getting angry when you fail. Acceptance of failure, acceptance of your limits. Acceptance of reality. Acceptance of things not always going according to your wishes, efforts, expectations.

http://chartgame.com/

---



http://chartgame.com/play.cgi?3hfh68

Won overall, but lost a few times, and didn't flinch when I lost, so I was ready to undertake new trades.

As I said before, losses that trigger anger and frustration carry this baggage of irrationality:
1) inability to close the trade (the loss gets bigger)
2) if you close it, tendency to want to open another trade in the same direction (it hampers rational decision-making and thereby interferes with profitability)

All these things happen in life as well, for example when we want to engage a staring contest with someone, a yelling contest, an argument, or other non-profitable behaviors. But only trading gives you the exact assessment of how unprofitable a given behavior is, by assigning a monetary value to different behaviors.

 

[Yamato]

Wow, I am doing it. It's happening. Remember, how I said I was learning German too slowly and had to find some activity that would make me expand my vocabulary more quickly? I found just that activity I was looking for: reading newspapers of the period I am interested in: world war 2.

I have learned about 50 new words in just 3 days, after reading, with the help of online dictionaries almost one full page of the September 2nd, 1939 Wel Blatt, nazi-oriented newspaper of Wien. I highlighted in yellow the parts I've already translated:



I just started reading the editorial. They talk about Hitler's speech in the Reichstag on September 1st, 1939. I have that speech, too. The recording.

This is the perfect activity for me. The crosswords were good, but I wasn't learning as much as from this. And this is easy to digest, because I am eager to learn what it says. Hopefully I'll get used to this and go from one page in 3 days, all the way to 2 pages per day. That's all I can read in Italian or English newspapers, partly because I find them boring propaganda.

In fact, these nazi newspapers are just as much propaganda if not more, but at least I know that, and I am not being bombarded with the same nazi propaganda from all sides. With the present western propaganda instead, I am nauseated. So I will probably read many more pages, once I get going.

I can't believe I got this far, without ever spending more than a few hours in Germany. I went there like 5 times (I was living on the border), and each time I only spent a few hours. If I can teach myself German without going there, I won't show it off, but it's quite an achievement.

 

[Yamato]

key factors for my breakthrough and personality change

As I make progress and move towards a new personality I want to record for future reference how these changes came about:

What gave me the desire to change:

The only factor I can identify clearly is my huge loss in trading. In two years I went from 4k to 47k, and then in 3 months, I went from 47k to 2k. This made me understand that there was something to change and it wasn't going to be solved by the usual "be disciplined" or "self-control", because this never worked with me. I had to get at the roots of the behaviors I wanted to discipline, namely: ANGER. Anger, that arises when:
1) you lose, when you don't make as much as you expected...
2) anything else in life doesn't go the way you want / expect / consider fair/just

Anger that causes:
1) doubling up on losing positions
2) not closing the losing trade
3) wasting your time ruminating all the times someone/something didn't go the way you expected

So, as far as trading, you cannot tell yourself: let's use the stoploss, endlessly. Let's not double up on losing trades... when anger is there, you're out of control. Anger makes you lose rationality. You become another person.

You can't discipline all the consequences of your anger. What instead can be done is understanding why you should not be angry.

How I understood the solution:

One key factor to understanding which was the proper way to go (analyzing my own anger and wrong assumptions), is the fact that, while I caused my financial ruin (blowing out my account) I recently also gave up on people. On expecting that people would behave properly, honestly, fairly.

So, simultaneously:

1) I blew out my account
2) I was very disappointed by one or two colleagues, which were the only ones that I still appreciated (all remaining 95% I have been despising for years)

So, despite my deeply-ingrained habit of thinking that everything had to go my way, my persistent effort to make everything go my way, my being a control-freak... despite all these bad habits, I managed to open up to change and see the problem in myself, thanks to these 2 simultaneous blows (to my mental setup, self-esteem or whatever else it could be called): at work with people, and at home with trading.

And I started seeing that:

1) there was no reason to expect everything to go my way
2) there was no point in getting angry when it didn't

That's how it all happened. The miracle of no longer being a control freak and a maladaptive perfectionist. The realization that I'd be able to improve my life and control my life much more if I became less of a perfectionist and control freak. Not just in trading, but in my general life.

I haven't completely changed yet.

But I can tell you this for sure:
1) whereas until two months ago, for decades, if anyone stared at me or "offended" my pride in any other way, I'd ruminate and hold grudges for hours and days
2) now I either let it go, or tell myself that I have to let it go, and it does work

The same of course also applies to countless other situations that all share this thing in common: things not going according to my wishes.

I used to try to fix all these things, even if it was impossible, or useless, whereas now I train myself to let them go. And it's working.

 

[Yamato]

There, made it again:
http://chartgame.com/play.cgi?3hfh68

Won with pleasure, yet lost gracefully at the same time:
http://chartgame.com/play.cgi?3hfh68



Not an easy combination. It's not easy to try hard to win, and yet be ok with losing. Not easy. This is the key of this whole business I've been talking about, for the last few weeks.

I've found out that it can be called in so many ways: patience, impassibility, self-control, wisdom, being realistic, being balanced, being rational, being smart, being self-confident... there are so many terms for this, and yet it also seems so inhuman to not have feelings.

Right, because all these qualities involve essentially not having feelings and not being human, under so many aspects.

For me this change has been so unnatural. I am still transitioning to the new personality. Impassibility in the face of defeat is at once so reasonable, so convenient and yet so unnatural.

And it all began, as I said, with realizing how many things were going wrong in my life, and realizing the symptoms of my discomfort all lead to one cause: anger for not getting my way. You remove this anger, and you become a more efficient person. In trading this makes the difference between profitable and unprofitable. In life, it makes the difference between frustrated and relaxed.

The simple answer is to stop getting angry when you don't get your way -- while still trying to get your way, when possible and when convenient. So the solution is not giving up, but accepting losses/defeats (in trading and in life).

 

[Yamato]

Today I finished my first newspaper page (Austrian newspaper Welt Blatt of 19390902), and started the second one:





I want to read the entire issue from that day, and since it is about 11 pages, I still have 90% of work to do:
http://anno.onb.ac.at/cgi-content/anno?aid=nwb&datum=19390902&zoom=33

I can definitely finish this within one month, at the rate, initially of half a page per day, and later, one page per day. Then, for the following issues. it will gradually get easier and I'll be able to read 2 pages per day. Then I won't try to go any faster, but I'll probably will take less and less time. My long-term plan is to follow the whole war through the pages of this newspaper (the Austrian newspaper Welt Blatt). What for? I don't know. What are we living for? Maybe I chose my own rat race, one where I don't have to compete with anyone.

Yes, I know that learning German and practicing on the chart game are not what I had hoped for (and what I had almost achieved) and it sounds like a small consolation. By now I could have been spending money on drugs and prostitutes.

But if I blew out my account so badly, it simply means I didn't have what it took. Definitely didn't. What I had achieved financially, through some lucky and a lot of skill (but with the flaw of using martingale methods to avoid the much-feared losses) was not matched by emotional achievement. When financial achievements are not matched by your head, you lose them. Like the sentence "a fool and his money...":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Tusser

Thomas Tusser (1524 – 3 May 1580) was an English poet and farmer, best known for his instructional poem Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry, an expanded version of his original title, A Hundreth Good Pointes of Husbandrie, first published in 1557. Five Hundred Points… contains the rhyming couplet:

A foole and his monie be soone at debate,
which after with sorrow repents him too late.[1]

This is an early version of the proverb A fool and his money are soon parted.[2]

So, since I lost because of methodology. Now I am getting back to methodology, and on top of german and chart game, I am practicing, in life, accepting defeats. I'll never get tired of repeating this, because it is the key to profitability, at least in my case, and i think in many other cases.

The "you must always win" upbringing only produces unprofitable traders.

So that now, besides these little consolations (still hard work anyway), my main task is to practice taking losses, taking them as pleasantly as possible, and if possible with complete indifference. I am practicing impassibility.

I know I am repeating myself quite a bit, but this is what I need to reinforce good behaviors. It is not easy otherwise to change lifelong habits. I need to fight the obsessions of having been a control freak, with the obsession of someone who is training himself to accept defeats.

I am being obsessive about removing obsessive behaviors. I am obsessively attempting to acquire the balance necessary to be a profitable trader. One who fights hard to win, but who doesn't throw everything away when he instead loses.

Let's play one more chart game. It doesn't matter if you win or lose. What matters is that you don't flinch when you lose.

 

[Yamato]

why relaxation techniques work

Today I don't have much to say.

Slept well thanks to those two links I read:
Progressive Muscle Relaxation
Autogenics

Furthermore, on top of these techniques, today I wasn't afraid of not falling asleep, which is a major cause of insomnia. I used to go like this: "Oh, damn... I only have 7 more hours to sleep.. I won't be rested"... "Oh, damn... I only have 6 and a half hours more to sleep...". This added extra anxiety. Today instead my approach was: if I don't sleep it will provide practice to learn to accept things not going my way. So, whether I fall asleep (win) or not fall asleep (loss, and practice in losing without suffering), it will be a good thing. So I had one less reason to worry, one more reason to fall asleep.

I woke up at 3 or 4 am, and started doing those relaxation techniques, after wasting 30 minutes trying to fall asleep normally. And within a few minutes I fell asleep. First I tried the relaxation, and then I tried the "hand getting heavier" method (autogenics). Interesting. I still don't know much about it, mostly because I don't remember by hear the methodology, but the little I know about it already helps.

It is really simple and stupid, but if you do it, it works.

On why relaxation techniques work
The important concepts about it are:
1) doing the autogenics mantra ("hand getting heavier", repeated 8 times) or the Progressive Muscle Relaxation forces you to focus on the exercise (by doing that, you're not thinking about the problems that keep you awake)

2) the deep breathing relaxes you and also makes me feel drunk (which has always worked with me for forgetting my problems). I think it's called hyperventilation.

...Oh, look. Go figure. I just found out that the inventor of autogenic training was not only a German and a Nazi, but a participant in T4 and persecution of homosexuals:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Heinrich_Schultz

Johannes Heinrich Schultz (June 20, 1884 – September 19, 1970) was a German psychiatrist and an independent psychotherapist. Schultz became world famous for the development of a system of self-hypnosis called autogenic training.

From 1933 Schultz wrote a relationship guidebook.[2] - with very liberal views. There he propagated the "extermination" of handicapped people ("Action T4")[3] and persecution of homosexual men was part of his activity at the Göring Institute. Schultz believed that homosexuality was hereditary and curable. On the one hand the institute tried to cure homosexuals,[4] while on the other Schultz led a commission that compelled those suspected of homosexuality to have intercourse with female prostitutes. The "guilty" were transported to concentration camps.[5]

Wow, if it weren't for the dangers, I would have volunteered to be cured. Being a suspected homosexual, I would have been forced to have sex with prostitutes for free.

---

Anyway, today I also found this interesting symptom of stress (caused by trading losses or other daily life cause): changes in swallowing and salivation. I added it to my list of symptoms and body language signs to monitor, as clues to the mental state.

And I also added "squinting".

Remember: getting angry about losing... only makes you lose twice as much. With trading this means blowing out your account.

The very reason I blew out my account is that I wanted to get back at the BUND for not going in the direction I expected and causing me a loss... of 500 euros. Another time, it was because I wanted to get back at GBP for causing me a loss of 400 dollars.

But even in life, I would say that being vengeful / touchy causes you... not just twice the damage but the damage to the nth power.

 

[Yamato]

Richard Strauss, Nazi collaborator to protect his family

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Strauss#Strauss_in_Nazi_Germany

In March 1933, when Strauss was 68, Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party rose to power. Strauss never joined the Nazi party, and studiously avoided Nazi forms of greeting. For reasons of expediency, however, he was initially drawn into cooperating with the early Nazi regime in the hope that Hitler—an ardent Wagnerian and music lover who had admired Strauss's work since viewing Salome in 1907—would promote German art and culture. Strauss's need to protect his Jewish daughter-in-law and Jewish grandchildren also motivated his behavior,[10] in addition to his determination to preserve and conduct the music of banned composers such as Mahler and Debussy.

Did you know that Strauss in German means "ostrich"?

 

[Yamato]

More progress with my German. I practically finished the editorial:



This doesn't seem much, as I was planning to do about half a page per day, and I am now only on page two of the newspaper, after almost a week of work.

However, I learned that the longer the sentences, the harder to understand and translate, especially due to the complex German structure of their phrases (is it called syntax?). They can't make it too hard if the sentence is short but otherwise it is a nightmare.

Then I found out that editorials have the longest phrases. For some reason. Maybe the writer wants to impress us or maybe he can get away with writing however he wants, or maybe the editorial is meant for the more cultured readers. So now the hardest part of the newspaper is behind me. I have calculated that on average the editorial has sentences of 8 lines, whereas the other articles have about half as much words in a sentence.

For the Fraktur font (the Gothic characters of the article), if anyone cares, I've created an exercise here which teaches you the whole alphabet:
http://quizlet.com/45745025/old-ger...utsche-gebrochene-frakturschrift-flash-cards/
Of all the exercises available (it is an awesome website), the most useful one is the "Space Race". It is so good that it's almost addictive. You can practice anything on this quizlet.com website, and you can create your own exercises for free, on any subject.

In some way, the reason I picked German and Fraktur, that is the reason I set out to read these newspapers, is because, at least here where I live, it could be considered, superficially, something really hard to do (which it isn't, after learning English, although that doesn't mean that it doesn't take a long time).

Having learned something that others might consider hard, even though I will not tell them and I have not told them, allows me, subconsciously, to take more defeats and losses, and still be able to say: I am OK. Maybe now this is not necessary anymore, but when i started this, I was the type of person who always had to feel superior to others at all times, and I felt this might help me with it.

I told you why I was this way: since I was a child, my father has inculcated in me the concept that I am so much better than everyone else, and at the same time that I always under-performed relative to my potential. Both sick and counterproductive principles, which lead me to endless and usually useless racing. I told you that this is the reason why I end up blowing out accounts with trading: because, with this background, I never allowed myself to lose, and turned small losses into situations where I risked blowing out my account -- in order to avoid admitting that I was "wrong". "Being wrong", such a shameful situation for me until now.

Sick father. I was weak, and I could not realize how sick he was/is. You don't have to become a control freak to do things well, and you don't have to be permanently dissatisfied to do things well. Sick sick sick.

Instead, I say to you: you can take all the defeats you want, and nothing will happen to you. Nothing on top of the defeat itself. Defeat and being defeated is not a tragedy. Defeat is a small meaningless incident most of the time. So are trading losses. Attaching emotional values, especially shame, to defeats is the best way to ruin your life and your trading account.

No matter how much we get insulted, how much we fail, we will be doing much better if we don't attach an emotional connotation to the word "loss", "lost", "failure", "failed", "wrong", "mistake". I used to think and act as if I was never wrong, and never made mistakes. After blowing out my account so many times, I've realized that it's better to be right 70% of the time on things that matter, than being right 99% of the time, and being wrong on, 1st mistake, the BUND, where you have invested, 2nd mistake, your entire account.

---

Anyway, let's just conclude with the closing of this editorial of September 2nd, 1939:



Yeah, it ends with (literally) the "law of action", which is also the title of the editorial, and a concept that I haven't yet completely understood...

http://www.linguee.fr/allemand-francais/traduction/gesetz+des+handelns.html
"On force les personnes concernées à agir."

Maybe it means "it's time to act" rather than "the law of action".

Well, this last sentence basically says that, after their proposals were ignored, and answered with several border violations, Germans have now the right to act. And the Wehrmacht, by order of Hitler, has undertaken the "active defense of the Reich". They started the invasion of Poland, and called it "active defense of the Reich". They're clearly in bad faith, but through massive repetition of lies, you can convince the stupid masses of anything.

Like Bush once said, he's in the business of repeating, of "catapulting the propaganda". And his truth worked as well, the famous "war on terror", after, much like Germany with Poland, the US attacked itself on 911 and blamed it on the Middle East.

 

[Yamato]

http://chartgame.com/play.cgi?3hfh68





won 1st game and won 2nd game, because i didn't flinch, didn't feel anger, didn't feel shame.

When you lose, don't flinch, don't feel anger, don't feel shame, and you'll be back on your feet in no time. Otherwise you'll lose more.

Brainwash yourself out of all the things you've been taught by society. Repeat after me: it's OK to lose, it's OK to lose, it's OK to lose...

... anyway, if they told me, and someone probably told me before, I would not have understood their point. So you must reach this maturity on your own.

...ah ah, this is awesome. I am solving the riddle of my life.

On the one hand, you have to keep on working in your best self-interest, but on the other hand, if it doesn't work out, just keep going and don't mind the losses. Don't mind, don't feel shame, don't flinch. Simply write it down for future statistical reference and learning, but don't draw any other conclusions, such as for example that you're no good, or that you should be ashamed of anything.

It's hard, it's hard... it's hard, but I am getting there. I am getting better and better at digesting things that don't go my way. Mentally digesting them, faster and faster. I am successfully deactivating the poison in losses / defeats /problems, poison that was only in my mind to begin with.

In the last few days:
1) I've digested in less than one day, without much pain, someone who didn't say "hi" to me in the hallway. I used to ruminate about it for days.
2) I've digested the child neighbor who was running up and down in his room, and jumping, as I was writing most of this post and playing the chart game, for about an hour in total. I used instead to bang on the wall with anger, to make him stop
3) I am digesting a dog barking in the street right now. It used to to make me angry and I used to dream of poisoning all dogs in the neighborhood.

This of course doesn't mean that if I had the opportunity to kill the colleague who didn't greet me, the child neighbor, and the dog, I shouldn't do it. By all means I should either get away from them or kill them, if possible. But when they do what they do, my objective is to not feel any extra anger, vengefulness, frustration.

I should not become so indifferent to these events that I don't notice what is good and what is bad. But I should limit my sensitivity to noticing what's to be eliminated / avoided and what is not. Not keep it as high as to hate, ruminate, and plan revenge against the countless events / people that used to frustrate me, and that even now I would gladly steer clear of, if I could.

In the same way, of course you should try to win all you can (unless of course it is counterproductive and attracts you envy and similar). Of course you should try to win every trade, and have a 100% rate of accuracy. However, if this doesn't happen, you have to show impassibility, which is not automatic but only acquired through training not just in trading, but also, as I've found out, in life. You can't be a control freak in life, and a touchy person, and then expect yourself to digest losses as if they never happen.

Nope. If you don't work on your personality (provided you have an unfavorable personality like mine relative to trading), then the one loss that you will incur sooner or later will cause you to blow out your account. Not the loss itself, but the anger, shame, and vengefulness which will arise when the loss happens.

And how did I become like this again?

As I said, I had a father who made sure to remind me of all my defeats, all the time, even when they weren't there, and I had achieved a victory and he kept nagging me all the time, without ever paying any compliments to me. Don't do this with your children. It's pure sadism and it will cause them problems. It doesn't make them any better. The stick and the carrot makes them better. The stick and the stick ruins people. I feel great anger and vengefulness towards my sick father. But let's try to digest this one, too.

 

[Yamato]

 

[Yamato]

In case you want to avoid brain-washing by the mass-media, here's the real news, by James Corbett:
http://www.corbettreport.com/interview-945-financial-survival-distrust-in-media/

 

[darktone]

Like Bush once said, he's in the business of repeating, of "catapulting the propaganda".

Sh!t, he really said that!? And how they clapped. Propaganda junkies

 

[Yamato]

Thanks for the feedback on Corbett Report and on Bush and his "catapulting the propaganda".

 

[Yamato]

Trying to explain my recent loss of mental sharpness

I will now try to explain my recent loss of mental sharpness.

First of all, what am I talking about?

Symptoms
Starting in May to June 2014 I lost some mental sharpness

I am much worse at remembering words I learn in German

When I type I confuse characters in words twice as often: I make one error every 3 sentences

I type words automatically, without thinking, and I end up typing another word. For example, I have to write "hope" and instead I write another similar word, "home"

I omit words more often than before as in "I learn this" instead of what I thought I was writing "I can learn this" (it happens about 3 times in every post, instead of once)
I am worse at remembering things, such as something I had to do

I am worse at remembering the automatic connections between doing something and all its implications, which allowed me to choose the best course of action

Having said this, I still haven't gone as far as forgetting the keys or leaving my door open. So, I haven't become yet a regular sloppy happy-go-lucky idiot, like those who surround me. And also, I haven't given up on any of the meticulous order I keep around me.



Causes
One or more of the following could be the causes:

POSSIBLE
The pot I smoked with my cousin and his friends while vacationing at the island in late April 2014. When it happened it had a normal effect, but maybe it destroyed something in my brain. Indeed I see that those who smoke pot are not as sharp as others. Not only when they smoke it but even when they're completely sober. In a sense, that is what my brain did: it relaxed. So this could be the cause, although it is strange that it could happen with just one session of smoking it and especially since I've smoked it many times before. However the timing is perfect, because when I came back from my vacation I said to my boss: "I have totally lost the will to work" and I repeated it and it was the case for about 3 weeks ("non ho piu' voglia di far niente").

UNLIKELY
The vacation from late April to early May, maybe relaxed me too much. This doesn't make any sense as being the cause, it's just that the timing coincides.

POSSIBLE
Psychological subconscious decision.
After so many years at work,doing the same thing and with the same stupid dishonest despicable colleagues, I kind of gave up on my hopes of any improvement and hope to leave.
Maybe connected to this other following event.

PROBABLE
Psychological subconscious decision.
In June, after going in two years from 4k to 47k, exactly on May 5th, due to my inability to accept losses, I doubled up on a losing trade on BUND, and blew out my account in the ensuing 2 months. This caused me to lose hope of ever leaving the office, but also it made me assess my behavioral and mental flaws (the inability to accept losses / defeats, also in life, and I am now changing that). This big disappointment caused me to get discouraged, and that strong blow to my emotions, might have caused me to care less about the details I was so obsessed about and which produced my efficiency. In a way it is as if I said: what is the point of all this mental sharpness if I then blow out my account in 2 months? And then I let go of all this useless mental sharpness, out of being disappointed with myself. The timing coincides, because I realized I lost my mental sharpness in May or June, and this event happened in June.
Maybe connected to this other following event.

POSSIBLE
Psychological subconscious decision.
In June, I was hugely disappointed by S., female colleague, who was the only person I still liked at my office together with D.G.. This was another very strong emotional blow, which might have discouraged me so much that I felt subconsciously I did not have the will and the resources to keep being so sharp, as a defeated army that retreats disorderly.
This is what happened. I had spent years complaining to her about colleagues. One day she got fed up with it, also because I told her I was studying Nazism. and told her that somehow I might have similar ideas in some aspects (e.g.: sending all my colleagues to concentration camp). She decided that she didn't like me anymore, and started attacking me at work on stupid details, talking behind my back, when I was there (!), with M. (huge bitch), and even spreading rumors against me with B., who stopped saying hi to me (she probably told her that I said I was a nazi).
After this huge disappointment by S. I kind of lost hope in people (even the trusted ones) -- after losing hope in myself for my trading errors -- and these two simultaneous disappointments might have been too much.

POSSIBLE BUT IT NEVER WAS THE CASE BEFORE
Just as smoking pot, twenty times before, never had caused me to lose any mental sharpness, I am thinking that the cause of my lost mental sharpness COULD be prolonged lack of sleep, but also have to note that lack of sleep never caused me to lose any mental sharpness before. I mean pot and lack of sleep make you lose TEMPORARILY mental sharpness, but not permanently, or at least not until now. But this, too, might have combined with all the other causes to bring it about. It might also be that this stress could have caused a TEMPORARY loss of mental sharpness -- which could still be TEMPORARY although it has lasted for already several months, and it might go away as soon as the stress and its causes disappear.

FATIGUE AT WORK (caused by stupid boss): LIKELY
This is not to be confused with the psychological fatigue from work which might have made me lose hope after so many years (see point above).
In late May, two weeks after I came back on May 5th, the boss asked very demanding work of me, and with stupid contradictory requests. I had done this job very efficiently for years, but all of a sudden my boss asked me the impossible, like the previous boss 2 years before with our stats -- yet then, too, it drove me crazy without causing me any losses of mental sharpness. Essentially the problem is that I was doing something always in the same way, with great economies of scale, and instead she (much like the previous boss) was now asking me to change the columns, the time frame, to change the sources of data, now using two different sources at once, and, together with all these impractical changes, she was expecting me to take the same time, and did not understand this made the process completely inefficient and multiplied the time required from 1 to 10. I complained repeatedly and this umpteenth disappointment and stress might be the cause of losing mental sharpness, along with the efforts spent trying to figure out her impractical contradictory requests. Furthermore, when I explained to her the problems she was causing me, she took me for an idiot or treated me that way. Stupid bitch. This is the most likely cause together with the trading losses. Because after this ordeal with the stupid boss who asked something impossible to do in the same time, and ruined all my work, I distinctly felt worn out.

Of all these causes, the most likely ones seem to be: work fatigue, pot, trading loss, disappointment by colleague, and/or any combination thereof.


Treatment

A cure that I have already implemented at work: care less about the boss's requests and leave at 14:00 even though you haven't completed a given task. Maybe it is not a cure, but just a consequence of giving up on people and work. I also don't care to impress my boss anymore, given that I don't appreciate her anymore.

Something I haven't effectively implemented yet, as I was never able to do in my life, except on vacation, is sleeping more.

Another cure might be if I make my money back with trading and recover my self-confidence, whose loss might have caused this whole thing.

A cure or again a consequence of this fatigue caused by people is that I resolved (and have implemented efficiently) to no longer listen to my dad's monologues. He never cared about what I had to say, so enough with this injustice.

In the same way, I no longer let people joke with me at work by pretending that I don't have any longer a sense of humor. When they make some joke, I pretend I don't understand. With this, I greatly reduce the time wasted at the office, and the stress of having to hear stupid people say something stupid. I mean: you are already a stupid idiot, so at least be serious and produce intelligent sentences or don't talk.

I no longer spend time, even just on the phone, with people who disrespect me in any shape or form.

To counter my trading losses and get back to trading I am in the process implementing a mental conditioning /reasoning in order to clarify to myself that emotions are harmful in trading, especially when losses happen. This deletion of emotions from losses (in trading and in life) might also cause me to lose emotions in general, which is not as bad as it sounds -- in fact not bad at all. This is also enabling me to be more efficient in every aspect of my life, and although I am not doing it to recover my mental sharpness, it might improve it by decreasing the stress I experience in my life, which was largely caused by my extreme sensitivity.

So the idea, for both efficiency (trading or regular life) and mental sharpness (whether i can recover it or not) is to:
1) reduce stress (by decreasing useless emotions and other useless things in life)
2) increase rest (by relaxation techniques and/or sleep)

---

As a side effect, the limitation of emotions might make me appear self-confident, but in fact it is not about self-confidence.

You see, once I get insulted or similar (by a person or by the market), by getting offended, I am simply adding stress and damage to my life. When instead I get insulted but I do not get offended, not only am I not adding any damage, but the insult itself is really nothing. It is one word / action that lasts a second. And the trading loss, too, on the BUND was 500 euros. By turning that "insult" (by the market to me, an imaginary but deeply-felt insult) into an emotion and taking offense, I turned that 500 euros loss into (by adding positions) a 45 thousands dollars loss.

So, this new attitude seems to come from self-confidence, even extreme self-confidence and arrogance even... but it's really just the knowledge that comes from doing the math, after emotions have disappeared. After emotions disappear, you realize that your math has been corrupted by emotions all your life, and that, no matter what insult you receive, taking offense multiplies the damage. So what's up with someone who doesn't react to insults? Extremely self-confident? Sometimes yes, but in my case, if I achieve this that I am setting out to do, I will be simply someone who has done the math and has decided to not add damage to damage.

In the same way, but according to a different rationale, if I feel that I haven't clipped my fingernails perfectly or my hair, and I feel the urge to go and clip/cut them to fix them, this is a behavior that has to be avoided, because these things are literally "inconsequential" and therefore should be avoided. My usual talk about "maladaptive perfectionism" vs "adaptive perfectionism".