Tag: Psychology

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JK Rowling: The fringe benefits of failure

Ms. Rowling’s commencement speech at Harvard in June 2008. It is about 20 minutes in length.

The speech is 2 speeches in one.

First part of the speech focuses on her journey from youth to poverty and how that transformed her. Learning firsthand from poverty is not fun. For those who have a very strong will, it is a very effective tool. As Ms. Rowling says, it has profound impact on her and contributed to her success which was not something she has planned for.

Second part of the speech focuses on the inequalities in this world where she learned from her work with people suppressed by their governments. Ms. Rowling is trying to remind the graduating class that they have a responsibility too to make a difference in this world because of who they are.

It is an inspirational speech worth watching.

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Larry Smith: Why you will fail to have a great career

This is an interesting TedTalk that gathered quite a number of comments from the viewers. It is about the excuses people made to avoid following their passions.

It is a funny talk. Mr. Smith delivered a great talk and it is very much to the point.

To follow your passion – you may not even know what your passion is. And when you do, you may not have the courage to pursuit your dreams. And most important of all, you may fail and it is something you have to learn to accept and move on.

To my younger readers – you may not know for sure trading is where your passion is. You may have chosen the wrong instrument to start with. Until you experiment enough you may never know. Most of us may not have what it takes to be great traders. But there is always room for decent traders to make a living. If trading is something you truly love to do, you can make it work too.

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Angela Lee Duckworth: The Key To Success? Grit

A very short TedTalk from Angela Lee Duckworth on how students of various kinds can come out ahead in their classes by having grit.

This presentation is telling us one important thing – the science is there proving grit is more important than IQ or even talent in many cases if the only thing that matters is to be able to achieve certain level of proficiency, like passing a grade or graduating a class. As oppose to the thinking of the helicopter parents where no failure is allowed, it is actually better to fail and retry so that the mind can grow and improve over time.

It is interesting to learn from the talk that once a group of students realized that our brains actually grow from our experience, their ability to carry on with their learning improves.

Trading skill is definitely one of those skills that require grit more than talent. One just have to realize that it is doable to make it possible. It takes willingness to step out of our comfort zone to try, to fail and to learn from our failures and mistakes so that we grow as a trader. The perseverance will pay off.

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