The Secret desire to lose syndrome & Stock Market Investing

The secret desire to lose syndrome

Notice how everyone is always happy to talk about a miserable situation and how very few get any joy from examining a positive situation. We seem to have an affinity for negativity, and this is what most investors need to overcome if they are going to stand any chance of winning in the markets. Negativity only perpetuates the secret desire to lose syndrome, focus on what you can control and not on things that are beyond your control or reach. Stock market crashes can be viewed as opportunities or monumental losses; it all comes down to the angle of observation.

We will examine this topic very briefly because it does play an important role in investing. Individuals, as a rule, seem far more inclined to listen to and act on negative information rather than on positive info. Don’t believe me; allow me to illustrate this point to you.

Affinity For Negativity concerning investing

We have four glasses of water on the table. Someone states that the water in one of the glasses came from a Jug that had a dead fly in it. Now mind you, you don’t even know this person, yet immediately almost everyone would walk away from those glasses, even if they were dying of thirst. Almost no one would try to verify if this information was indeed true.

Now someone comes to you and states, hey one of those glasses contains water from the purest spring in the Swiss Alps. I am almost sure that no one would rush to drink all four glasses in an attempt to secure the purest water.

Take it a step further. We have gloom doom arguments on how the financial world is going to end, and immediately our ears perk up. Yet let someone come up with an argument stating that everything is fine, and we don’t want to listen or at most, we will only listen with one ear.

Market Crash Fables perpetuate secret desire to lose syndrome

How about market crashes. Gurus coming out stating that the market is going to crash and burn and the masses panic and start buying puts and dumping their quality shares. If someone comes and states that the market is going to rise, they don’t pay attention to the person. (Of course, it can work the other way too, depending on the current sentiment and perception of the crowds.)

Life was, is and never will be fair. Life is what you make of it. So don’t fret about things you cannot control; instead, look for ways to take advantage of these situations. You have only one option; instead of trying to be a Good Samaritan and finding an early grave, just simply find out what the long-term trend is and follow it. With or without manipulation there is always a trend, and if you stay with the trend, you have nothing to worry about.

Investing and the secret desire to lose Syndrome

So far we have looked at the laws of paradoxes, and then we expanded on these laws and now we will slowly start to look at the ‘secret programmed desire to lose Syndrome.’

From the day we are born we are inundated with information, most of it is nothing but a mismatch of cultural values, religious values and what is perceived to be the norm during that period. For the most part, 80% or more, of this information is truly biassed and untested in terms of science and logic. What we mean is that we are told to believe things on the basis of “well that’s what our family did for generations, and that’s how things have always been.”

Following the herd is part of the secret desire to lose syndrome mentality

As time goes by we are told how we should behave, how we should eat, what we should eat, who our friends should be, what type of career to aim for, what is socially acceptable and what is not, around what age we should look to settle down and what type of woman or man would we should choose to settle down with. Individuals are also taught that working for the group or community at large is the right thing to do and that being selfish is very bad.

We are taught that we should dedicate our lives to one person and actually promise that we will do this, even though we have a very hard time just keeping our new year’s resolutions. People are not told that instead of saying I promise, we should instead say I will try my very best, but being weak and human it is possible that I might fail along the line. This promise in most cases is guaranteed to achieve the exact opposite result and if one looks at the statistics, the evidence is overwhelmingly in favour of this. It’s this fear of trying to live up to an ideal that most of us know that we cannot live up to that actually ends up in causing the relationship to end.

Think out of the Box

The most successful relationships are the ones in which a whole different approach has been taken; the key to their success is that in general the individuals involved are happy with themselves and are not looking to find happiness in another but simply enhance it. Thinking out of the box is one cure for the secret desire to lose syndrome as it provides you with the option of examining the situation from several angles as opposed to the one you are being directed to observe.

Today we will just dip into these topics and explore each one in more detail along the line. Just remember we are not telling you what to do, or that we are right or that we know it all. All we are doing is sharing our opinion, and we are willing to admit in advance that we could be wrong, and if proven to be wrong we will readily admit to our wrongdoings. Life is not about trying to prove you are the best, but simply a quest for new information and looking at old information with a new set of eyes.

The Secret desire to lose syndrome & Stock Market Investing