How to recover from a past "injury"!

Watch out for this! by B. Zheng

Let me start with a well-known phenomenon in sport such as motorcycle racing, it can help us to stay on the winning track regardless of what we choose to do in life.


Motorcycle Riders

If you follow motorcycle racing, you see an interesting phenomenon. A motorcycle rider in perfect riding condition would suddenly take himself off the track with no injury or incident in the middle of the race when other motor bikes are simply getting near him.

Further study shows that this is due to some previous injury or incident that had happened to this rider in a race.

Here is what happened. The motorcycle rider could be injured in a previous race, prior to that injury his main focus was mainly on how to ride his own race and control his own bike. After that injury, while he keeps this painful experience in his mind, he is now unconsciously trying to control other riders’ bikes to make sure that he doesn’t get into such a painful situation again. In other words, his focus is now mainly on other riders’ bikes, rather than controlling his own bike and riding his own race.

Anyone observing this rider from a distance can tell him not to waste his time trying to control other riders’ bikes, how can he? But the poor guy just couldn’t help it as his attention is too stuck on his injury in the past.

The problem gets worse from there. Due to his inability to control other bikes in the race, he is now less certain about his ability to control any bikes for that matter, including his own. It is no wonder why his race performance starts to deteriorate. He can get so afflicted that he will take himself out of the race when he sees other bikes are getting too close to him.


Share Traders

Similar phenomenon happens to just about all the share traders. Many of them start with making some good money in the stock market at the beginning, people call this ‘the beginner’s luck’. Until one day they made some unexpected losses that really hurt. From that day on, he started to try to control the stock market and its movement. How can he?

Over time, the share trader’s whole attention is on the market (i.e. like the other bikes in the same race), rather than their own strategy or systems. A few more losses (i.e. injuries) later, they start to react irrationally and doubt their own ability. That is why you see share traders’ common sins as taking themselves out of a winning position too early or not being able to cut losses as they want the market to give back their losses. How can they control the market?


Property Investors & developers

The same phenomenon happens to active property investors and developers, not so much to long term property investors who treat their investment properties as set-and-forget long term assets. When a property investor or developer starts to feel the pressure of their mortgage repayment or lose some serious money from a property transaction, they are ‘injured’ financially.

They start to try to control the external environment such as property prices and interest rates, no different to the motorcyclist trying to control other riders’ bikes. The more they try to do so, the less they feel they are in control. Many once very successful property investors and developers have gradually lost interest in properties after some financial setbacks; they never learn how to put themselves back on the winning track again.


Summary

I can go on and on about this phenomenon in just about everything you can see, just to list a few more here:

• A business operator had a good staffer leave and break his heart. The incident affects how he treats his staff in the future.
• An employee suddenly gets fired by the boss he respects. The incident affects his relationship with all his future employers.
• A wife suddenly gets an unexpected harsh treatment from her husband, which affected her relationship with her husband (or any future relationships) from then on.
• A keen investor goes to an investment seminar with the hope that everything will improve quickly, only to find himself disappointed or ripped off. This affects his attitude towards all seminars.
• The list is endless.


Conclusion

Realizing this phenomenon can solve 50% of the problems one may have in different areas of his life. The reality is that if you are going to race, you can’t avoid the fact that other people run into you every now and then. The question is how you can stay in control of your own race, so that you can win more often than you lose.

In other words, losses are guaranteed, you just need to have more winners than losers.

I haven’t met a single person who has never had any challenges in their race to their financial destination. Unfortunately most people have not been given the tools on how to recover and overcome their past ‘injury’, they take themselves out of the race when they should stay in.