把嘲笑当激励

最近不太想动脑筋。。。因此，还是选择了一本轻松小品。戴晨志的书我读过不少。这一本倒是漏掉了。好吧，再来轻松一下吧！

结果，轻松是轻松；但是，还是一无所获。糟糕，激励中毒太深了。我尽然连读三本激励书籍，却一点感觉也没有。看来，我真的需要更深的毒品（激励书籍）。前辈当年说的真对。激励书籍真的不能读太多。有一天，你真的会中毒太深，而找不到更高级的毒品！！！

基于个人原因，我没办法给这本书太高的评价。10分满分，勉强给个1分。阅读的乐趣是有，但启发性太少了。老实说，这篇书评写的很辛苦。写了五年部落格，还是第一次出现这种状况。是时候换一换书籍了。激励书籍，请暂时离我远一点。我需要戒毒了，呵呵！

佐賀阿嬤給我的人生禮物

上回【佐贺阿嬷笑着活下去】让我挺失望的。但是，还是有点不甘心。佐贺阿嬷的故事难道真的不再让我共鸣吗？于是，我又找了多一本佐贺阿嬷书籍。希望这回能找回一点共鸣度。

结果。。。感觉是好了一点。但是，共鸣还是有限。看来，这类书籍不再是我的那杯茶。或许，换另一个角度来说，这一切不是坏事。至少，证明我成长了。我比较懂得面对无常的人生。因此，这类书籍可以抛到云霄之外了。

共鸣虽然不高，但这一本很明显好过上一本。第一，内容比较丰富。第二，幽默层度也提高了一些些。结果，虽然不太启发我，但我读的蛮有趣的。

10分满分，这本书对于“成长了”的我还是值得4分的。虽然不会再碰佐贺阿嬷的书籍，至少这一系列书籍在我人生中肯定起过作用。。。

佐賀阿嬤 笑著活下去！

上两本书籍折腾了我的情绪，烧坏了我许多的脑细胞。。。是时候读一读小品式的作品。多年前就读过【佐贺的超级阿嬷】，但我不知道这系列书籍还有延续。好吧，这个时候就轻松一下吧！

当年阅读【佐贺的超级阿嬷】挺感动，挺共鸣的。这回，除了轻松阅读；老实说，没什么启发。是这类故事已经不再激励我了（毒瘾太深了，需要更强的激励书籍），还是人生太多的酸甜苦辣导致一切都麻木了？或许，两个都是。。。结果，我很轻松的把这本书读完。但，印象真的不深刻。

还好。最后的终章关于橡皮筋飞机和纸飞机的一幕至少触动了我许多儿时的回忆。我小时候也是活在“纸飞机”的时代。但，我的童年基本上还是快乐的。诚如作者的总结般，阿嬷的诚恳态度从来不让贫穷成为作者童年的破坏者。这一点，父母和我家里的兄弟姐妹也做到了。

10分满分，没办法给予这本书太高的评价。轻松小品式，但也太轻松了吧！好吧，反正褒贬不一，就给予3分吧！

Trading Psychology 2.0: From Best Practices to Best Processes

After mentality pressure by reading the previous book, this book by my idol Brett N. Steenbarger came at the right time. Yup, I need some psychology stuff, LOL.

This book is really special. It is not only a book purely about trading. The author quoted lots of daily real life examples instead of focus only on trading matters. After all, psychology applies to all sorts of matters in life. Trading is only part of our part time job... bearing the same weight as being a father, a son, a teacher and whatever roles we play throughout our entire life. Leading our life remains our main job...

On top of this, the problems highlighted throughout the book are so real that I truly believe he wrote what he did in real life with traders. Amazingly, few of my puzzles resolved by reading this book. In fact, those puzzles had disturbed my mind all the time before this.

On the four topics discussed, I think the author did so well by highlighted the necessary psychology process to be not only a good trader, but a healthy trader too. I personally benefited a lot especially on "building on strength". From there, I finally realized that I lost a bit of passionate that I build on since day one. In fact, those passionate are so important to build myself towards a better trader, as well as a better person. Right now, I regain what I lost thanks to this book!

However, I am not 100% agreed with the author in all topics. For instance, I do not quite align with this thinking: "When market becomes crowded and price becomes choppy, the style may become shorter-term and opportunistic. When positioning has cleared out and new development are on the horizon, the trading may become longer term and more thematic." This statement alone is too "predictive" to reactive trader like me. After so many years, I still think I am not smart enough to predict any possible outcome. As such, I always distance myself from making projections. To me, dumb player like me are better when react to situation.

Secondly, the author actually suggests to social more within traders: "We can think of networking as a group based solution focused intervention. Imagine a group of talented traders, each sharing best practices." I did this since day one. Ended up, those who wanted to share are not the real experts. Those who willing to share are looking to dig other peoples' stuff instead of sharing. So, to use networking as a group based solution is not really my cup of tea. Perhaps, I had not met the right person...I think the author agreed with my view to certain extends: "When you experience a degree of success in markets, suddenly you find yourself with people wanting to be your friends. They are painfully one sided - all taking, not giving. This is particularly problematic if you're active in social media. Without filters, it's easy to become swamped with unfruitful and unfulfilling correspondence... We can proactively create our environments to maximize experiences of well-being... If you aspire to be all that you can be, you cannot be all things to all people and engage equally in all things. Find the people and activities that inspire you and bring out the best in you and filter the rest."

Overall, this is still one of the best books behind "The Psychology of Trading". Although I may not agree 100%, but I still rate highly this book. As such, I have no hesitation to rate this book at 10/10. This is another excellent book by the author and I will definitely reread this book again in the future. Last but not least, there are plenty of great quotes from this book as below (which I think every trader needs to read it again and again):

When we are focused on the problems and overwhelmed by them, we typically fail to appreciate the fact that there are numerous occasions in which the problems don't play out. It's what we are doing when problems don't occur that can point the way out.

Successful market participants rarely excel in both slow and fast thinking, but they almost excel in one or the other. In a purely cognitive sense, they play to their strengths.

There is something to be learned from every trade outcome - good or bad. No trade is a complete loss if it can be a learning experiences. An additional benefit to the embracing of loss: It turns trade review into a habit, and that in turn makes adaption a continuous routine. Flexibility had become our routine.

Discipline is great for doing more of what works. When the status quo no longer works, however, adaptability becomes the new discipline.

Indeed, by emphasizing a victim mindset - bad things happen to me - such thinking systematically dis-empowers a trader. If you are the victim of bad luck, bad markets, and bad trading, how can you become the author of your own turnaround story? One of the habit patterns most important to cultivate as a trader is the ability to lose in a way that gives you energy, rather than robs you of initiative.

At times, I've also had traders voice their thinking into recorder and then listen to themselves rant. As a listener, the traders can see that what they are saying is not helpful, which helps halt the process. It is not enough, however, to halt the negative thinking. We need positive habit patterns that shift negative thinking into constructive actions.

Perfectionism drains energy. It does not inspire performance; it turns inspired performance into something "not good enough". The idea of small wins means that your focus should not be on perfection., but an improvement.

The traders I've known who have sustained long-term success have always been driven by something beyond immediate excitement and profitability. Very often, those drivers have reflected core strengths and interests that provide energy, even when markets are not paying out.

Successful trading has to fit into your life, not the reverse. We don't have to have all of our needs met through our trading, but we cannot allow our trading to frustrate our most fundamental needs and strengths.

I've often joked that many talented traders are "worriers" and "warriors"; they take risk, but keep themselves clear of overconfidence biases by continually preparing for adverse outcomes. Negative emotional experience can be very useful in managing trading risks.

Happiness is a habit, not a random emotional event befalling us. Pay particular attention to the activities before, after. and during your trading day that energize your performance. We are least likely to fall into bad habits and behave impulsively if we are operating at a high level of energy and well-being.

It is not enough to master stress; we must sustain life passion if we're to energize our trading. Had our work been problem-focused - analyzing past conflicts, tracking his self-defeating behaviors and thoughts - we would have never re-insulated his house. He had to rediscover his happiness before he could rediscover his trading.

While most of us are not mired in depression and burnout, we also do not experience passionate interest and love for life on a regular basis. Most of daily experience is spent in routine, which is efficient in the short run but de-energizing in the long run. We bring our energy leaks to the trade station, falling short in our trading.

When we derive energy, affection, happiness and satisfaction from activities outside the markets, we don't have to overtrade markets to manufacture good feelings. Many times, the answer to our market problems is cultivating the positives from our nontrading lives.

Our connections to others are powerful buffer to trading stress.

Gratitude leads us to become better at retrieving positive information, because it naturally turns our attention to positive aspects of life.

It is often when we feel best about our trading that we fall prey to overconfidence biases, confirmation biases, and illusions of control. Without mindfulness, we are just likely to be swayed by positive emotions as negative ones.

The result of incubation is a kind of "aha!" experience. Perhaps because we have been open minded mode during the incubation period, creative insight feels as though it comes to us; we do not make it happen.

Experience does not necessarily lead to expertise; we don't necessary trade better if we trade more. The successful one spend more time generating trading ideas than in actual trading.

Creativity is not a talent that one is either born or without. Rather, creativity occurs at the intersection of focused immersion in field; deep experience and expertise in that field; and the cognitive flexibility to perceive one's field from different perspectives. Creativity follows passion.

Traders at prop firms and hedge funds can handle losing money reasonably well when others around them are also struggling with performance. If they are losing money while others are minting coin, however, the situation becomes intolerable. 

Many trading problems - and emotional problems related to trading - are a function of one person needing to do too many things to run a trading business well. 

A common mistake trades make is to respond to difficulties in markets by working harder, spending more time on trading, and hoping that sheer effort will arrest their drawdowns. If, however, we double down on activities that are not providing us with positives, we can quickly become overwhelmed. That means we work smarter, not harder. 

We can't win the game if we can't stay in the game.

Market uncertainty is like weather in that there will always be people speculating. Unless there is a drastic occurrence you have to be optimistic and know that rainy days are followed by sunshine. Always. 

You have to have confidence in the few, essential components of your success to lean on those exclusively. Too often, when we seek the crutches of things to add to our strategies, it's because we lack confidence in those strategies.

The flush times will be followed by lean times and the lean times can become prosperous once more. That can't happen, however, if you don't save the money from the flush times to finance the times of relearning and adaption. Too often, once-successful traders become former traders because they can't finance their new learning curves.