Ankur Mangla

“1. In sum, a habit is formed during the dream stage, then the habit is reinforced and permanently embedded during the routine stage, at which time we are unconsciously longing for the dream-stage feelings we left behind at the beach or at the spa or at that outdoor concert. This, in fact, is why most beverage brands are so ubiquitously present at summertime music festivals and concerts; those companies know this is one of the best windows to hook new customers on their products. Red Bull, for example, got its start by distributing free caseloads of the stuff at cool “hangouts” like malls and surfing shops, where teenagers and college kids tend to gather to escape the mundane routines of their everyday lives (by the way, it’s no coincidence that malls and certain kinds of stores become the “cool” hangout location—that’s another happy “accident” engineered largely by marketers. The company knew that if it caught these kids in their dream stage, once Monday rolled around and they went back to their classes, chores, and homework, they’d associate Red Bull with the carefree feeling of hanging out at the surf shop—and pretty soon they’d be hooked.”
― Martin Lindstrom, Brandwashed: Tricks Companies Use to Manipulate Our Minds and Persuade Us to Buy

“The prevalence of lawyers in American life is unusual. But their dominance at the top of American politics is startling. “Though they make up less than 1 percent of the population, lawyers currently constitute more than one-third of the House of Representatives and more than half the Senate. Fully half of the last ten presidents were lawyers, as are more than a third of the officials now serving in the states as governor, lieutenant governor, and secretary of state,”
― Ezra Klein, Abundance: How We Build a Better Future

“The brain is usually quite capable of separating internal from external activity (that produced by sensory information), like keeping received and sent emails in separate folders. The theory is that hallucinations occur when this ability is compromised. If you’ve ever accidentally lumped all your emails together in the same folder you’ll know how confusing this can be, so imagine doing that with your brain functions.
So the brain loses track of what’s internal and what’s external activity, and the brain isn’t good with such things.
>> how blindfolded people struggle to tell the difference between apples and potatoes when eating them.
>>patients who experienced hallucinations were far more sensitive to self-tickling, suggesting a compromised ability to separate internal and external stimuli.

>>You walk along the street and a bus stops alongside you. This isn’t surprising because your mental model of the world recognises and knows how buses operate; you know buses stop to let passengers on and off, so you ignore this occurrence. However, if a bus pulls up outside your house and doesn’t move, this would be atypical. Your brain is now has new, unfamiliar information, and it needs to make sense of it in order to update and maintain the mental model of the world.
So you investigate, and it turns out the bus has broken down. But, before you discover this, a number of other theories will have occurred to you. The bus driver’s spying on you? Someone bought you a bus? Your house has been designated as a bus depot without your knowledge? The brain comes up with all these explanations, but recognises them as very unlikely, based on the existing mental model of how things work, so they’re dismissed.
Delusions result when this system undergoes alteration. A well-known type of delusion is Capgras delusion, where people genuinely believe someone close to them (spouse, parent, sibling, friend, pet) has been replaced by an identical impostor.31 Usually when you see a loved one, this triggers multiple memories and emotions: love, affection, fondness, frustration, irritation (depending on length of relationship).
But suppose you see your partner and experience none of the usual emotional associations? Damage to areas of the frontal lobes can cause this to happen. Based on all your memories and experiences, your brain anticipates a strong emotional response to the sight of your partner, but this doesn’t happen. This results in uncertainty: that’s my long-term partner, I have many feelings about my long-term partner, feelings I’m now not experiencing. Why not? One way to resolve this inconsistency is the conclusion that they aren’t your partner, but a physically identical impostor. This conclusion allows the brain to reconcile the disharmony it’s experiencing, thus ending uncertainty. This is Capgras delusion.”
― Dean Burnett, Idiot Brain: What Your Head Is Really Up To

“Now I have the skills to make money, and I trust that the market will give me opportunities to make money. This trust has been built and strengthened by my intense study of market charts for every period I desire to trade. The trust is further strengthened by my humble dedication to my vocational skillset.
The patience flows from my trust in the market and in myself. I have an emotional connection between trust and patience. I trust the process will come, if I am patient. If I am patient, I will win. Winning does not determine anything else to me. If I am not patient, I will not win. I will do anything to win. Therefore, the trust overrides any sense of impatience that may arise in my mind, because I trust that when I miss this signal, there will be another one coming.
My confidence comes from continuously working on my game. I learn technical analysis once. I learn all the time. Some markets move. Some markets are dead. Some markets require larger stops. Some markets are faster to trade with orders because they move so fast. The markets are forever changing, and I change with them.
The confidence and patience arise from the trust and the patience and the process. Of course, yours truly has bad trading days. I just don’t care. I am grounded in this moment. I focus on the process. That is all I can do. I can’t dictate to the market what it should do. I must be like water, and flow. I must flow with the spirit of the market. I don’t fight the market. I flow with the market. “Just flow,” as I tell myself.”
― Tom Hougaard