One thing was clear though, I became scared of my mind. I was aware of it but did not fully accept it since I was so scared to face it. I know i have it because since 6th grade when it first hit me, I started to have an extreme phobia of fiction books-- I've stopped watching TV and if I do watch a series of some sort, I get unbearable pain trying to watch the last episodes. I'm so scared to tap into my mind because I know how powerful it can be and I'm scared that I might go crazy. The mind likes to play tricks and I felt it was trying to control me. It wasn't me, I knew it wasn't me but it keeps thinking on it's own and influencing me. Thoughts start to rush and I start thinking of things that wasn't real but it felt so real. They're just thoughts but they start to have an impact on my physical body, How is that possible?? With just a small change of how I think, I have pains in my core, start hearing things, start seeing things, heart rate speeds up, time can slow down, i start "seeing" glimpses of the future.. it's so scary, i couldn't figure out what was going on.. ** (Back to present) I was able to pause right before I started a trade back in December, I was so aware of what I was about to do that I took my pulse right before I initiated the trade. 85bpm.. I clicked BUY and got into the trade-- my heart rate nearly double to 150 in just a few seconds.. that is insane, the only difference was that in me knowing I was "IN" a trade caused my heart rate to speed up..**
Whatever it was, I ignored it for so long.. I became unhappy and emotional to what was going on at that time. I couldn't communicate effectively to others what it was that I was seeing on how the things weren't right. To counteract the unhappiness, I started to study Friedrich Nietzche and fell into a nihilistic view. I didn't know at the time but my mind had already taken over. On the outside I was on track with life goals, after i finished nursing and got my 1st job-- I was completing my BSN, have my Life/health/property/casualty insurance licenses, have my securities license, and was just about to take the Texas Realtor Exam. I was making 80k/yr as a new RN and was about to get another jump to 90k/yr in another 6months. This did not include that potential commissions I was about to make in real estate and insurance. The goal was to invest at least 40k/yr in real estate, in 10 years I estimated to have over $500,000 to build at least a passive income of $3,000/mo in which I can retire. I was doing what I had planned but I was dead on the inside.
Why was I doing this? What's the real motivation for earning so much money? Was I really doing it for myself or just to fulfill someone else's sense of what I should be doing. I started crashing mentally, and slowly physically as well. I hit 112 lbs at one point and had headaches that lasted for weeks. I knew something was wrong but couldn't "wake" out of it. Best thing I did after 3yrs of being in a rut was to leave it all behind and reverse my situation/thoughts.
Join the airforce.. as an officer and make alot of money? nah.. I needed to go to the lows of the lows.. where money, hopes, expectations were relatively non-existent. Chose being a grunt, where the mind/intelligence is not needed and only a warm body counted. I needed to see how people with "low IQ" has it figured out because someone with "high IQ" was losing it.
Life sucked so bad but I learned how to embrace the suck. RESILIENCY was the name of the game I was learning to play. With no expectations set of me as I was just a little low rank unimportant me, I was able to hone in on myself and increase my awareness..
In the first year, I learned how to defeat my anxiety. I had an epiphany one night on WHY I was always looking towards the future. I was a very, very OCD and organized person when I put my MIND to it, but when my MIND is in control, it can't stop thinking about the future and is always planning things I didn't want to happen. It's good when it's controlled, but uncontrolled planning leads to extreme dreading of the future. Planning for the future is good but I shouldn't "LIVE" in the future. I learned to just spend a very small time thinking/planning and instead of focus on the NOW moment or focus on DOING what was planned. This is the start of when the week-long headaches started to stop.
In the third year, during my slow grind fighting my mind, a "new" old idea came up. I've always deprived myself of certain "happinesses" so that I can save money for the future. Examples are of not buying materialistic things. But to try to be "happy", I got into a relationship. It was a weird relationship because my mind was throwing red-flags about it all over the place. Even the girl always mentioned it to me that on the first time we met, that it seemed forced on my part. It was true, I was forcing myself to be "happy" and let emotions take control. Fast-forward months later and I had to finally listen to my mind. The worst way to live is a reactive way to your emotions. That's when I realized that the mind is a good thing when it is controlled, the mind is what can "control" emotions.
I finally learned that emotions are always going to be there. As much as I "try" to be a Heero-Yuy and pretend that I don't have emotions, emotions are always going to be there. The key that I found out is not in "controlling" emotions, but controlling my "responses" to the emotions. That was a huge insight since I've separated the emotions from the "me". Furthermore, staring into the stock market, there's a saying that truly hit me-- Staring into the stock market is like a mirror, all you will see is yourself. And what I saw was someone that was in need of repair badly..
During my fifth year, controlling emotions and bad behaviors due to emotions was the game. My trades from December 2016 resulted in losses due to emotional trading. I intensely upped learning how habit formations work, how behaviors work, how to replace bad habits/behaviors, how to be disciplined to be much more effective in trading.
Summer 2017, I traded crypotcurrencies. Losses due to emotional trading was still there but I was much more aware of it and was able to set up systems to limit my reactions to emotions therefore limiting my losses somewhat. Majority of my losses was now due to my mind playing tricks on me. I became even more aware that my mind was its own entity. I mean it wasn't anything new that I didn't know-- i've tried to fight it before. But unlike before, instead of fighting it, I started to apply what I learned with my emotions... to just accept that it's there and not to judge it. Since I started to accept it and no longer identified myself with it, it was much easier to practice seeing things in the external world without passing judgement on them which is exactly what is needed to reach my goals in trading.
Rest of 2017-- Mindfulness and increasing attention are now the name of the game. Increasing my ability to see things with more level-headedness/objectiveness is that last thing I need to learn before I start trading again.
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In "The Power of Now," Eckart Tolle wrote:
BEYOND HAPPINESS AND UNHAPPINESS THERE IS PEACE
THE HIGHER GOOD BEYOND GOOD AND BAD
Is there a difference between happiness and inner peace?
Yes. Happiness depends on conditions being perceived as positive; inner peace does not.
Is it not possible to attract only positive conditions into our life? If our attitude and our thinking are always positive, we would manifest only positive events and situations, wouldn't we?
Do you truly know what is positive and what is negative? Do you have the total picture? There have been many people for whom limitation, failure, loss, illness, or pain in whatever form turned out to be their greatest teacher. It taught them to let go of false self-images and superficial ego-dictated goals and desires. It gave them gepth, humility, and compassion. It made them more real.
Whenever anything negative happens to you, there is a deep lesson concealed within it, although you may not see it at the time. Even a brief illness or an accident can show you what is real and unreal in your life, what ultimately matters and whta doesn't.
Seen from a higher perspective, conditions are always positive. To be more precise; they are neither positive nor negative. They are as they are. And when you live in complete acceptance of what is -- which is the only sane way to live __ there is no "good" or "bad" in your life anymore. There is only a higher good -- which includes the "bad." Seen from the perspective of the mind, however, there is good-bad, like-dislike, love-hate. Hence, in the Book of Genesis, it is said that Adam and Eve were no longer allowed to dwell in "paradise" when they "ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil."
This sounds to me like denial and self-deception. When something dreadful happens to me or someone close to me -- accident, illness, pain of some kind, or death -- I can pretend that it isn't bad, but the fact remains that it is bad, so why deny it?
You are not pretending anything. You are allowing it to be as it is, that's all. This "allowing to be" takes you beyond the mind with its resistance patterns that create the positive-negative polarities. It is an essential aspect of forgiveness. Forgiveness of the present is even more important than forgiveness of the past. If you forgive every moment -- allow it to be as it is -- then there will be no accumulation of resentment that needs to be forgiven at some later time.
Remember that we are not talking about happiness here. For example, when a loved one has just died, or you feel your own death approaching, you cannot be happy. It is impossible. But you can be at peace. There may be sadness and tears, but provided that you have relinquished resistance, underneath the sadness you will feel a deep serenity, a stillness, a sacred presence. This is the emanation of Being, this is inner peace, the good that has no opposite.
What if it is a situation that I can do something about? How can I allow it to be and change it at the same time?
Do what you have to do. In the meantime, accept what is. Since mind and resistance are synonymous, acceptance immediately frees you from mind dominance and thus reconnects you with Being. As a result, the usual ego motivations for "doing" -- fear, greed ,control, defending or feeding the false sense of self -- will cease to operate. An intelligence much greater than the mind is now in charge, and so a different quality of consciousness will flow into your doing.
"Accept whatever comes to you woven in the pattern of your destiny, for what could more aptly fit your needs?" This was written two thousand years ago by Marcus Aurelius, one of those exceedingly rare humans who possessed worldly power as well as wisdom.
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This is so stupid and funny at the same time... I posted a quote from Lao Tzu last year and contrary to what was depicted. I always thought it said control your emotions.. Looking back now, the chains are also on the MIND... -_-;; tsk tsk... it's so sad to have something staring at you in the face yet you fail to completely comprehend what is in front of you because your too busy listening to what your mind says instead of listening to what's in front of you... well for the future of my trading... this is no more.. I am not my emotions, I am not my mind, I am.
No to Nihilism
Marcus Aurelius "Meditations"
Seneca
Epitectus
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