Ankur Mangla

“My trust (in the markets and in myself) supports my patience. My patience (that a setup will materialise) feeds my confidence. My confidence (that I will win) dictates my inner dialogue. My inner dialogue (what I tell myself while I am trading) supports my process-oriented mindset. The process enables me to stay focused in this moment. I support this loop with my mental exercises. They feed, nourish and sustain the loop.

I trust. The research underpins the trust. The trust supports the patience. The patience is underpinned by the mental exercises, and it nourishes my confidence. My internal dialogue is driven by it; it nourishes my confidence. My internal dialogue is driven by a process-oriented mindset, fuelled by my confidence. I focus on what I can control – my mindset, my risk approach – and I let the market do what it wants to do. Whatever it does, does not trigger the fearful side of my mind. That has been trained away. I am not afraid of the market. The only thing I am afraid of is that I do something stupid in the market. If I trust myself, this does not happen.”
― Tom Hougaard, Best Loser Wins: Why Normal Thinking Never Wins the Trading Game – written by a high-stake day trader

“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

“John D. Rockefeller: “I know of nothing more despicable and pathetic than a man who devotes all the hours of the waking day to the making of money for money’s sake.”
― Andrew Wilkinson, Never Enough: Why You Don't Want to Be a Billionaire

“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