I was at the mall the other day and took a look at folks walking around. When will the "girlie" magazine have an article on the apparent fear of being in shape? Just kidding... but, seriously, these writers who write these articles, like the one about "fear of success". They come from little towns in the midwest, their goal is to leave their little town and families behind, come to NY, start a new life here, land a job on a top selling magazine writing feature articles... and they do it! They don't seem to have a fear of success. How come?
I've been watching some of Wimbledon over the last 2 weeks, and it has been interesting to see people at set point to go ahead in the match, only to go on to lose the points, and then go on to lose a tie break as well. Then they have to fight their way back into the match only to do the same thing again when they get ahead. There do seem to be examples of it everywhere. Natalie
Competitive sports is a terrific psychological training ground for any endeavor, trading in particular. The biggest lesson in [some] sports is not the competition against someone else, but to observe your own mind when competing. The "Zen" books about sports talk about this. IMHO, they are actually terrific trading books as well. nitro
I'll give two examples...one via athletics and the other via trading. Trading Example. A close friend of mine is a much better trader than I via 3 contracts or less...he averages about +4 points per contract via trading 3 contracts or less. However, when we bump up to more contracts like 10 contracts... he suddenly starts missing trade signals, removing stops and getting a bigger loss, taking trades via no trade signals... usually saying the following after a big loser day..."Its scary to think how much money could have been made just sticking to the plan"...something like that. Simply, he's one of the best traders I know that trades small size and one of the worst traders I know when trading larger size. Athlete Example. In high school...there was this guy that could beat everybody on the team during practice...easily. Yet...in actual competition...he performed either the worst or far below his potential...consistently while others from the team were reaching either the finals or winning championships. Thus, the best guy on the team was consistently cheering from the bleechers after loosing in the premilaries. I thought this was rare until I saw it again while in college via another athlete. My college teamate...the best or one of the best on the team...had excellent training habits up till the last 2 days of training...in those 2 days...he would party til late into the night, poor nutrition habits, argue with team mates and sometimes would start thinking about losing way before the actual competition started. However...the college guy eventually got professional help (sports psychologist and a psycho-therapist)...while taking a year off from sports...came back and won the National title his final year when he should have been a 3x or 4x NCAA champion. Fear of Success (self-sabotaging) that's mentioned above is extreme and obvious. However...usually its more subtle and very difficult to detect until its too late. NihabaAshi
Some of this has got to do with being a competitor, too. I know men and women who are excellent competitors in that when they are in a pressure situation they improve. I don't know where this comes from but it can certainly be improved through athletics at an early age. And although most people seem not to be able to 'rise to the challenge,' the ones that do often seem to in whatever competition in which they participate. I should re-state that because athletics are not the only place this comes into play. Performance. Anything involving the performance of a task which is not rote, which sometimes involves competition, which often involves the pressure of observers. Anyway, trading involves this competitor's mentality and fear of failure and success are not issues for these people. The fact is fear of failure and success are always dealt with away from the point of performance, because when it is time to do - there is no room in the mind for anything else. But, this is realy tangential since most people do very poorly when it comes time to perform. A long time ago I read The Mental Game of Baseball, I forget the author's name, which was an excellent review of the mental approach to competition/performance and was not in any way limited to baseball. Baseball really only played the role of prime example in the text, the concepts are more broadly applicable.
Thanks for the observation. My point was that successful women write articles about the fear of success. I found that interesting. Successful women, or men for that matter, while not being labeled fearful of success, may be battling other fears, nonetheless. Everyone has their demons. All in all, it's helpful to be able to place a label on one's problem, in order to be able to "contain" the problem from so doing. The pop psychologically mentality of the culture we live in spawns countless books on self-help every day, guaranteeing that you're sure to find your particular malady in one of them. I'll see if can pick one up on "lostism".
LOL. Safe is where we center. Name it_________ Survival we do really good. Name where you go to survive___________. Fear. Oh don't go there that's where failure is. Name a place where you do not want to fail __________. You get to fear of success by turning the above coin over. People do not do most things because it carries them to unsafe places; places where they do not yet know how to survive; and places where they can really fail best. Draw the line of where go won't go. On the other side are all the things and places that you fear being successful in accomplishing. there's somethings for everyone.
Hi Nihaba, I think it's a little bit too easy to blame it on the fear of success. In your examples I think it is the preassure of success. In the athlete example the athlete doesn't have pressure to succeed in training. If it goes wrong today there's another chance tomorrow. But in competition there is the pressure to succeed _this_ time - the next competition is a year away and then there is only one chance again. Many people (me too) have problems to deal with this - to get into a mental state of self-confidence and taking things easy without being careless. If you are afraid of losing you lose. If you are too careless you might miss an important thing and lose, too. In the case of the trader I would say he left his comfort- and confidence-zone when he trades 10 contracts. The money he has won hasn't been booked on his mental account, and with his old mental account value 10 contracts are too much risk. I found out that I treat fast-earned money with much less care than my money thats booked in my mental account. And I get very risk averse if my real account drops below my mental account. Success means for me to achieve a goal that I set for myself. If I don't achieve one for a longer period of time I really get a thirst for success. So I don't think that I have a fear of success although I'm reluctant of leaving my comfort zone. In my day job this works together: Success means staying in the comfort zone and failure means trouble. If someone has fear of success he/she isn't satisfied with the pros and cons of the state he/she wants to achieve. Then the goal hat to be changed. Self sabotage: There is this scene in the film "the fabulous destiny of Amelie poulain" where a horse sees a bicycle race, jumps over the fence and joins the race. (It's a scene that actually happened). The horse left its comfort zone of food and shelter. Maybe it just followed an instinct - but do we something else? What looks like self-destruction might be the wish to join the wild life after being fed up of the life of a domestic animal. Last year my equity curve went up and down six times - six times success! I had got what I wanted. Was it also six times self-sabotage? Or was I just too elated and too much leveraged and couldn't think clearly any more? Or did I stumble when I tried to jump over the fence? Or am I fed up of being a domestic animal but afraid of the wild life?
fear of success is very real and a hinderance to many. what is most insidious about this fear is it is difficult to clarify unless you know exactly what you are looking for. real success is foreign to many,hence brings apprehension and fear of the unknown to the forefront. best, surfer