Here are some interesting statistics from the Baker IDI Heart Attack and Diabetes Institute survey of 1000 heart attack survivors.
1. One in 10 survivors admitted to smoking.
2. Six out of 10 don’t have a healthy diet.
3. Four out of 10 didn’t follow their doctors advice to improve their health.
4. Three in 10 had cholesterol and blood pressure levels above recommended targets.
5. Women are worse than men when it comes to changing lifestyle (this is the opposite of what I would have expected)
So what is the relationship to trading?
It shows that the default setting for the majority of humans is to be an idiot that is lacking in self control and any modicum of discipline. My understanding of heart attacks is limited but my guess is that you are lucky to survive one, your chances of having another one go up and your chances of surviving the second one goes down.
Is it any wonder traders cannot follow a trading plan when people who are faced with a life threatening situation cannot follow what is fairly rudimentary advice to improve their chances of survival.
It is interesting to me how most of the important things in life can be reduced to a few simple concepts that are really quite easy to follow. The problem is that the majority of people are completely incapable of adhering to these simple concepts.
I think in essence this is because we place so little value on reflection. Without reflection you do not look at what you are doing and realise it is not working any more.
So even though you are exposed to new information or learning, at the first challenge or test, you discard this and go back to what you used do, or your old schema.
The most successful changes I have made and stuck to are when I have set aside time for reflection and realised something I had been doing was totally broken, only then could I let it go and adopt something new permanantly. The other option of course is to immerse yourself in something and cut all “safety lines”. For example whilst I might think it is a great idea to learn a second language, nothing will happen. If you drop me in Poland, I will learn because I will be hungry if I don’t. I would have htough having a heart attack fit in this catagory though!
I am interested in others thought as to the value of reflection in making sustained change in ourselves.
Tye
Come now, requesting to be taken outside in your wheelchair post heart attack to have a fag is an important part of dealing with the stress of having the heart attack.
My view is that most people are driven by short term needs and goals and are incredibly bad at planning for the long term and then acting on those plans.
Also most people don’t actually make decisions but follow the path of least resistance
This is true of health, trading and probably everything else in our lives.
It’s easy to eat chips and smoke now especially if you friends all do so. Why not take drugs too while you are at it.
It’s easy to snatch profits and let losses run if no one can see what you are up to.
It’s easy to live our entire lives in the same way as everybody else. Leave school when our ,ates do get the same sort of jobs, buy a house if they do or rent if they do. Anything that makes us feel part of the pack and anything that is an easy choice at that particular moment in time.
This is why banning smoking in pubs and work places has been more effective in reducing smoking than cranking up the price with taxes. When you have to leave the pack for a fag it instantly becomes less fun
Hi Nick,
I agree with your points as to why we start patterns of behaviour, ie path of least resistance and no long term vision.
What prevents us from changing once we discover we were wrong, is what I was trying to explore.
I don’t think being “part of the pack” explains enough why when we are presented with new information about better behaviours, we adopt it briefly to our benefit, but then quickly drop back to our old behaviour that is harmful. It is almost like we never really accepted that our old behaviour/schema was crap. So we are fine about going back to it.
Cheers,
Tye
In one of his 10 minutes Chris referred to people being like crabs in a pot. When one tries to escape the others drag them back in. I think that’s a part of the explanation alongside the fact that our behaviors are habits. Habits can be very hard to break because there are all sorts of triggers. I recently bought a book “The power of Habit” – Charles Duhigg which I hope can enlighten me more.
Another factor is that we seem to be crap at reflection anyway. When you consider that something like 85% of us think we are above average drivers and that most of us seem to fluff around acting on our system 1 brain but still believe we are better than average how can that be a good starting point to change our behaviors?
Couple this with a nanny state government and a crop of youth that largely seem to believe that you can fix everything with the reset button and what hope is there that this will get better rather than worse?
A cautionary not about blood pressure
I have never smoked, my weight is reasonable, I get lots of exercise and my blood pressure was fine at 50 yet now at 53 it was too (astronomically) high.
I have had blood tests, X rays, Echo cardiograms, pee tests and been generally prodded and poked. The final decision is that it’s hereditary and that I’ll have to take medication for the rest of my life.
So next time you are in the chemist and they have a BP Cuff available stick your arm in it and see what’s happening even if you were tested a few years ago and were fine.
I’m glad I did