Training the heart to invest

I was talking with a couple of friends yesterday about various aspects of DeFi platforms, risks, crazy yields and the various losses and said, "I am not cut out for this". The first reply was based on my results, which are not too bad considering there have been a few terrible calls saying, I am cut out for this but then I rephrased, "my heart isn't"

You can train your heart.

Fair play.

This is true and while a lot of people think that old dogs are unable to learn new tricks, the sad fact of the matter is - that is bullshit. It is very much possible to retrain what we do and while there are various limitations, I think when it comes to improving ourselves emotionally (the heart), there is no end to the journey, we an improve til the day we die, some even believe in an afterlife, so I am guessing improvement would be possible there also if they are correct.

Emotional control has gone out of favor the last handful of decades as people have been trained to "show their emotions" and have taken the belief that it is in the "showing" that the value lays. No, it is in the ability to choose to show, which requires emotional maturity and dexterity to be able to feel, evaluate and then make a decision as to whether showing the emotion brings value to the situation.

Some people believe that emotions should be shown unrestricted, without acknowledging that a lot of the emotions we feel are actually false positives, where the trigger is a misread and the emotion arises automatically, even though the information is poor.

"How dare you say I look fat in this!!"
I said "fab" dear. FAB.

Features. Advantages. Benefits.

Emotional control

Emotions are great, as without them we feel nothing other than the physical senses we have, meaning that they help us evaluate our world and build strategies about which paths we are going to take. They are a tool. But, they are often inaccurate and they will move on all information that comes into the awareness, even if at the fringe. This can be very handy to be able to make fast and rough decisions, such as a fight or flight response, but they also trigger at inopportune times. Being able to catch the emotions as they arise and investigate their validity and application, is emotional control.

Advantages of Emotional Control

Being able to control emotions and choose when, how or if they are relevant or if they are to be shown, means being able to make emotions a resource. This means that they can be used to empower and improve personal and environmental conditions. A lot of people talk about "my emotions" without realizing that if they are unable to control their flow or impact, they do not own them, they are a passenger, a victim of their emotions, a victim of themselves. No wonder that with the reduction in effort to control emotions, there is a rise of victimhood mentality.

Benefits of emotional control

Again, the emotionally uncontrolled are victims of themselves, but they make them victims of the environment too, as they express their unevaluated or validated emotions, but still believe they are justified to do so without consequence or response. Emotionally uncontrolled people believe that their emotions are paramount in importance and that the environment should bow down to them. But, they are in a world of largely emotionally uncontrolled people and the response can be swift and severe, creating a lot of damage to current or halting potential relationships. The emotionally controlled are able to harness the power of the tool and use them to manipulate their world, in the same way a hammer can build a house. The emotionally uncontrolled swing the hammer around hitting other and themselves in the process.

Over the last four-plus years, I have gone from my worst economic position in my life to my best economic position, and while not yet comfortable, I have built up strategies to approach the environment. One of these has been to improve my emotional response to economic stimulus and the concepts of failure, loss and success. I didn't have to do too much to actually train formally, I just had to participate and pay attention to the feedback I was getting from the environment and myself. From there, I had to reflect and work out whether or not my response was appropriate to the environmental inputs I was receiving.

Over time, I have been able to improve my personal understanding about a whole range of financial and economic factors and be part of investing into many aspects of them, but more importantly, I have been able to evaluate and validate my emotional response in these areas. I used to carry a lot of fear that would hold me back, now I carry a lot of fear that I can use to slow myself down, do some due diligence and still move into the fray.

I have trained my heart.

What is interesting to note is that with this training, I have become more risk-seeking in my investment strategies and it has indeed paid off. A lot of people will note the difference in attitude to the growing value, but that is not the case, as I was taking this path while value was declining from the last bullmarket and deep into the bear. This reflective path was able to "survive" the bear emotionally, because it was able to identify and acknowledge the feelings in regards to the environment and instead of being uncontrolled, put them aside and replace the automatic physical response to emotions, with activity that would look to build for better times.

If there is the belief that the world will be better, behavior has to support that belief. A lot of the emotionally uncontrolled have a disconnect between their belief of their world and their behavior, meaning that they are constantly going to be facing conflict, as things are never as they expect them to be, because if they were, they wouldn't be emotionally surprised. But, because of the lack of control, they are constantly butting heads with the world and the people in it, having their automatic responses based on their emotional response, lead their actions.

A lot of our emotional response is built in childhood and habitualized, making it feel like part of us, even though it is at least partly, a learned behavior. We begin to identify with our emotions as ours, even though we do not own them, nor take responsibility for them at all.

From observation, we all tend to have some kind of emotional relationship with money, investing, loss, success and failure and it is those of us who have been able to build personal understanding and control around these subjects that tend to have the best experience with them, as the emotional response and the behavior is aligned with the belief of the future.

We are products of our past, but this doesn't mean we can't affect how we approach the present and point ourselves in a different direction for the future. But, when we keep replaying the same habitual responses based on our past emotional learning, we are continually going to take an automated response and one that we are likely not going to want, if we could choose for ourselves. We do a lot of work to increase our opportunity and range of choice in the world - but if we aren't even able to stop ourselves from acting on misguided emotional response, what choice do we really have?

A lot of people spend a lot of their time thinking about how to invest their money to generate more - but their heart isn't playing the same game.

Training is needed.

Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]

Thank you for the reminder @azircon.