My Attitude

Originally Created Sept. 6th 2008 and Posted on Myspace

My Attitude

By Lucas Tarigal

After having a nice long talk with my mom and pondering this subject for quite a few days, I decided to detail how I look at the world, and what my attitude consists of.  I write a lot about asking girls out because I see that a lot like a numbers game, and it fits well with these examples. You can use anything really though. There are 5 main beliefs that I use, feel free, if you like them, to incorporate them into your own life using some kind of affirmation technique (or hypnosis, or whatever it is you use to change your mental environment). These beliefs all go together, and they are interchangeable, so I will give them all at first, then explain their use afterwards.   These were originally penned by Mark Douglas, so if you have read Trading in the Zone, you will recognize them from that wonderful novel.  This is basically my own take on them, and how I use them.  Enjoy.

1. Anything is possible, Anything can happen.
2. You don’t need to know what will happen next to make money, create success, or feel happiness in any form.
3. There is a random distribution between wins and losses for any given set of variables that constitute an edge.
4. An edge is nothing more then an indication of one thing happening over another.
5. Every Moment is unique.

1. Anything is possible, anything can happen:

When we first hear that anything is possible, the mind (at least mine), tends to rebel a bit and say…well…not ANYTHING is possible. I mean you cannot flap your arms and fly, or breathe on the moon. And in a lot of ways, this is true. But I want to know, what use does this have to believe that this isn’t possible? Does it serve a purpose to believe that something cannot happen? What do YOU believe cannot happen? What is preventing this from happening? I know some beliefs that I had smashed back in my face over the years were: “I believe I will not get into a car crash,” or “I believe I will never be cheated on,” (that one a big one) or “I believe that I will not get any form of chronic sickness (woohoo Diabetes).”

If you think of it, after awhile, there is not much that you can think of that simply is not possible at some point in some way. And even if there is, it does not contribute to my happiness to believe something won’t happen. I definitely will be laughing when someone flaps their arms up to the moon and breathes space dust. Usually, a good indication in my self that I have not incorporated this belief, is that I feel surprise at something, which usually has some kind of emotional add on (like getting stuck in a bad bad traffic jam…surprise!).

2. You don’t need to know what will happen next to make money, create success, or feel happiness in any form.

A lot of times, we get caught up in trying to know each and every detail of whatever it is we are working on. We want to know where every threat may come from. Say we are working on a project, we want to know exactly what can go wrong, or right, or whatever! The fact is, we cannot know everything, there is simply too much for our conscious mind to consider and take in everything. With the advent of chaos theory, along with quantum mechanics, we can see that, small little things, like a butterfly, can cause typhoons around the world. How can you know where every butterfly is in the world if you are trying to know the weather? It is simply too much, we cannot keep up consciously.

Now this does not mean that our subconscious cannot make very good decisions based on the available information. I know I share the experience with people where I will have a feeling such as “Don’t ask that girl out, or go on another date with her,” or “that guy seems a little angry, probably not someone I would want to work with.” These bits of creativity/intuition that we get are really the subconscious mind telling us what IT has gathered from all the information we are taking in (as a side note, did you know that under the right circumstances, your subconscious could generate the weather for everyday for YEARS past? That’s a lot of info). Of course then our conscious mind steamrolls over it by saying “yeah but she’s hot, go for it,” or “this guy is really smart, I want to work with him anyways.” So when I say that you do not need to know what will happen next, I really mean consciously know, as in, thinking and weighing certain parameters. There is simply too much information, and it’s not worth it because the littlest thing can throw any plans around. Imagine stressing all month long on a project, only to have a butterfly ruin everything; it’s simply not worth it to me.

3. There is a random distribution between wins and losses for any given set of variables that constitute an edge.

It seems to get a bit complicated here, but it’s really not. If you read the fourth belief, you know what an edge is. It’s simply the probability of one thing happening over another. For example: I know that if I ask a girl out, get her number, and call her twice (trying to arrange a date) without her calling me back, I can be pretty sure that calling her a third time will not garner any more results.

I strike out a lot with girls (win some, lose some). It’s no big deal to admit it, to hit the nice homeruns we have to take lots of pitches. Now I know there are girls out there, that if I were to ask out, and called three times, that on the third time, I would get a response. But I know that in a probability scheme, even if I miss that one girl out of a hundred that will respond on the third call, its not worth my time to call all other 99 a third time and waste the time. This can be applied anywhere really, for example, an edge in selling if you’re a car sales man.

All it is, is the knowledge that one thing is more probable then the other. When I have this edge, I know that there is a random distribution between wins and losses. I treat it as a coin flip. So for the above example, if I ask 100 girls out, I may get 50 numbers, of which 20 call me back, of which 18 I go out on dates with, of which 5 I actually like, and of which…well…you get the point. I don’t get hung up on any one thing because I know that there is a random distribution for wins and losses, and that I cannot KNOW which will be which (remember all those little butterflies that may cause random bricks to fall on my head from the sky?). I may have a feeling about one more then the other, but as soon as I think I KNOW, then I get into trouble because I have an expectation. When I have an expectation, it opens me up to being disappointed, which opens me up to negative emotions, which makes me ask less girls out, which makes life a sad place. Hence, I want to avoid negative emotions by not being attached to any one occurrence of my edge occurring. It’s just a coin flip, and there is no sense trying to predict a coin flip even if the last 10 flips were heads. Win some lose some.

4. An edge is nothing more then an indication of one thing happening over another.

This is pretty well explained above, it’s just an indication of one thing happening over another. Such as knowing you will tend to go faster in the left hand lane compared to the right, even if you get slow cars in it.

5. Every Moment is unique.

Quantum Mechanics has shown us that things are not perfectly predictable at the atom level. In fact, most things are an assortment of probabilities of one particle being in one place, over another. The chances of the same moment happening again are almost astronomical. For this moment to not be unique, there would have to be a perfect arrangement of every atom exactly as it was in that previous moment, down to all the same thoughts and actions held by everyone involved in the exact same way, with the planets and stars and galaxies in the exact same positions with all their atoms doing the exact same thing.

What this shows is that really, it’s impossible for this moment not to be unique in some way, even if it is similar to a past instance. That means that you cannot take a past moment, and say: Oh this moment is like that, then I guess the same thing must happen this time around. The media is terrible at this. They are constantly bringing up old situations in history and trying to scare their watchers by saying: “Will this happen again!? Watch at ten to know how to protect your self!” Every moment is unique and different then all other moments, and all moments hence. Enjoy this moment, because you will never see its like again, ever.

That pretty much sums it up. These beliefs I hold in my very core. I have heard complaints such as: “Yeah but they are not all true,” or “this instance contradicts a certain belief.” This may be the case, but it’s pretty irrelevant. I do not hold these beliefs because they are true, or right, or logically correct. I hold them because they give me a winner’s attitude, not afraid to try new things, and cause me to be more carefree and in touch with my intuition.

If every moment in your life is a random distribution between wins and losses on certain edges that you have gathered from experience, then you have a huge reduction in negative emotions. If something doesn’t go your way, you know it to just be a coin flip, and that you are closer to a winner, or something that does go your way.

If you believe anything is possible, and you do not need to know what will happen next to be happy, then you will not be stressed out all the time trying (futilely) to figure out what can go wrong, or what you need to do to win. Plus you will be open when new experiences inevitably come along to challenge the way we think about the world.

We are all really looking for love and happiness, but we get all concerned with being right, and knowing the facts, and looking good, that we make ourselves unhappy with foolish actions that go against what our good sense tells us.

I want to reiterate, by embracing these beliefs, I do not get to be right or logically superior, or correct, I never get to tell someone “I told ya so,” I never feel like I make huge mistakes that are unforgivable, I never get to let an accomplishment go to my head and inflate my ego, I never let a failure go to my esteem and make me feel bad, I never have to stress out, or freak out, or worry about anything. I never feel immensely negative, or immensely positive, I get to simply enjoy being alive and in this moment, which really is the most positive thing you can experience. At some point in life, you may get asked whether you wish to have happiness, or to be right(to know). Choose wisely. I hope you enjoyed this, feel free to shoot me a message, comment, or question.