Business
Hey everyone. This is Kirk here again from Option Alpha and welcome back to the daily call. Today, we’re going to be talking about why fear comes from a loss of control. This is actually really interesting if you think about it, but we have this really strong primitive desire to control everything in our environment and really, the people and the things that we interact with. We see this all the time in markets because people will pay thousands of dollars for indicator signals and for forecast, for glimmers of hope into what the future might bring. This is why actually, analysts just really hang on this idea of future casting earnings or future pacing growth because everyone wants to know what’s going to happen in the future. If they know what’s going to happen in future or they have a good idea of it, then maybe they can control it or take advantage of it some way. We actually do this in our personal lives all the time in the sense that we always check the weather, right? You will always have an idea of what the weather is going to be maybe five days out or seven days out and this gives you a sense of control because if you can predict potentially what the weather’s going to be, you have this desire to control the situation and make sure that you’re all ready and available in case it snows or rains or there’s a tornado or a hurricane or whatever the case is. But in both the markets and in the weather, we know that even though we might have an idea, maybe an inkling of where things are going to go, we still don’t know exactly how it’s going to work out. The best forecast in the market have turned out to be in many cases, sometimes completely wrong. The best weather forecast as to where a storm or a hurricane or a snowstorm might hit turns out to be completely wrong as well. And so, we know that we can’t control these situations which creates a lot of anxiety and so, what we fear is this loss of control and it’s actually nothing mental. If you really think about it, fear has nothing to do with anything mental that manifest in your body. It’s all physical. We know that if we slow down that the weather changing and going from snow to rain or rain to snow really doesn’t change you. It doesn’t really impact your life really one way or another. Does it change maybe what you wear one day or where you drive or how long it takes to you to get to work? Sure, but is it really going to impact your life? But for some reason, we fear this anxiety that we have physical harm that’s going to come to us from having a loss of control and the physical harm doesn’t have to be that you’re going to die or get hit or be in a car crash. It could be just losing a family member. It could be losing relationships because of some event that happened. Oftentimes actually, people are really fearful in trading because they’re quiet and they’re very subdued in their trading activities. They don’t really share it with anybody. They don’t really talk about it because what they fear is not necessarily that people will ask some questions or that they will be inquisitive, but they fear is they fear a loss of relationships, that if they look and act like something different out of the norm that they might lose relationships that they really care about. And so, it’s this loss of control that develops fear around trading. “I don’t want to look stupid. I don’t want to look dumb. I don’t want to look like I did something and lost money and now, I look like an idiot and I lose my relationship with my wife or friends or family or kids or whatever the case is.” The key message today is just to understand that fear has nothing to do with anything that manifests mentally. It’s all actually just a physical reaction to this loss of control that we are feeling in our body. We’re losing control. We’re developing anxiety. We’re developing an awareness that we might be disconnected from other people or other situations or relationships or things that we enjoy. And so, this is really where it comes from. If you can learn to overcome this and learn to control this, then the sky is the limit for you because you can basically take fear out of the equation and you can live more freely, trade more freely, invest more freely. One of the ways that I’ve been doing it in my life and trying to work around this as well is I’ve been not checking the weather. I don’t check the weather now moving forward. In fact, I often hear from somebody, “Hey, it’s supposed to rain today.” And I just learn through the fact that other people are telling me. But I don’t check the weather. I know what season it is. I know what time of year it is. We’re getting into the holidays obviously. It’s getting colder in Pennsylvania. We’ve had some snow. I’m aware of that, but I’m not checking the weather anymore. I don’t know if tomorrow’s going to be a blizzard snowstorm. I don’t know if it’s going to come in a week. And so, this is a way for me to control this fear that I have of understanding what the weather is going to be even as small as this and I can then now dovetail this into other areas of my life. Hopefully this helps out. As always, if you guys have any questions, let me know and until next time, happy trading.