False Evidence Accepted as Reality - Richard Machowicz

“Fear, the worst of all enemies, can be effectively cured by forced repetition of acts of courage.”  –Napoleon Hill

“You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face.”   –Eleanor Roosevelt

“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.”
 –HP Lovecraft (1890-1937, American author of horror and science fiction)

“Of all the liars in the world, sometimes the worst are your own fears.”   –Rudyard Kipling

“The only difference between a diamond and lump of coal is that the diamond had more pressure put on it.”  –Anonymous

From Richard Machowicz’s Unleash the Warrior Within in the chapter “Crush the Enemy Called Fear,” especially pages 42-49:

“Fear is not a true indicator of danger, evaluated experience is.”

“Good evaluations of past experiences makes for good decisions, period. And it’s good decisions that will save you.”

“Surprise is a major component of fear.”

“You ensure your survival by taking charge of moments.”

“I can’t control other people and I can’t control a situation. But I can control my actions in that situation.. . .  Me. I am the only constant that will be present in every situation I face.. . .  Work harder on controlling yourself than you do trying to control your situation.”

“The way to conquer fear is to move into and through it. Imagine it as veiled, paper-thin mist and just walk through it. It’s like fog. . . it seems to engulf you. But if you keep walking, putting one foot in front of the other, all of a sudden it’s gone.. . . Once you walk through this paper-thin mist, it’s clear on the other side. Your fear is behind you.”

“We may not call it fear — we may talk about having anxiety, or being nervous, or having a general sense of unease about something, but all of these names are just other names for low-level fear. It seems the biggest fear that most of us have in our daily life is the fear of looking stupid.”

“You can lash out out at people, you can get mad at yourself — you can even end up hating yourself without ever realizing that fear is the interference, the block in the road of progress.. . . When you find yourself acting like a jerk, stop for a second and just ask yourself, ‘What am I afraid of here?’”

“All negative emotions are attached to some fear, without exception.”

“Unless fear is acknowledged as the problem it is, it will always lead you back to the same place — and there you’ll be, not understanding why the targets you’ve set up remain so hard to knock down.”

Here’s what Dr. Brett Steenbarger says about fear:

Patterns of Fear - Particularly after losses, but sometimes after making money and being afraid of losing it, traders fail to act on good signals or do not size their trades adequately. The result is missed opportunity. Often this occurs if the trader is engaging in “catastrophizing”: making a normal potential loss into something much larger. Worry, physical tension, and feelings of nervousness are great clues to track in a journal. Once you recognize your fear patterns, you can take some deep breaths, calm yourself, and focus on assessing opportunity (and focus on those trading rules). One way of breaking overwhelming fear after large losses is just to put on some small trades when your signals are good and get your rhythm and confidence back. Then you ramp back up to normal size in a gradual, but steady manner. Playing defense is not giving into fear: having rules about risk control and hanging onto a day’s profits can help you distinguish the two.
. . .
Feelings of anxiety occur when we fear the loss of something important to us.
. . .
The problem for traders occurs for . . .fear-related ones: these emotions are responses to *perceived* threat and loss–not necessarily actual threats and losses. If we perceive that our future as a trader is lost (or if we perceive that there is no way we can make money during a difficult market period), we can respond emotionally and motivationally with suppression. We become discouraged; we lose our drive to persevere; we slip into modes of negative thinking that kill our drive. If we are perfectionistic and perceive *every* trading loss as a failure, then we can wrestle with negative, depressive emotions on a very regular basis–even if the actual, financial losses are minimal.
. . .
It’s common to think of trading as a stressful occupation, but much of the stress is self-generated.

Thx to Linda from the Left Coast for the preceeding.