Welcome to PART 2 of the books you need to read if you are looking to get into the stock market and reaching your financial goals. And this one isn’t a stock trading book, either.
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In the last podcast, we discussed “Think & Grow Rich” by Napoleon Hill, which is an awesome book, click here to check it out.
This time, we will be discussing “The War of Art” by Steven Pressfield. This was surprisingly my #2 favorite book. It is about breaking through the blocks of your inner battles. It really helped me to understand why I procrastinate, why I put things off, and how to break those habits.
So I am going to highlight key passages and takeaways for you, and help you see how it relates to the stock market. These type of books are very powerful when you are trying to create wealth, especially if you are going to be doing it inside of the stock market, when you need to overcome fear, greed, emotion, mental baggage, etc.
Page 19
“Resistance by definition is self-sabotage”
That is what the entire book is about – the inevitable resistance you will face when you are trying to go after wealth, when you are trying to better yourself, when you are trying to delve into the stock market.
The book goes on to give this example:
“When a writer begins to overcome resistance, which means he or she actually starts to write, she may find that those close to her begin acting strange. They become moody or sullen, they may get sick; they may accuse the writer of ‘changing’, of not being the person she was.”
What is resistance for a writer? It is hard to actually sit down and start to write and begin to type. When I read this, I totally related to it. Think about something in your life where you tried to better yourself – getting more education, starting to get healthy by going to the gym more, etc. When this happens – the baby gets sick, your husband gets sick, or people around you start to say, “You’re changing, you’re not the same person anymore…”. And the truth is – you’re not! You are trying to go in a different direction and those around you aren’t trying to go in that direction.
This is resistance. It’s like a rubber band – when you stretch one, it does everything to resist the stretch. You have to do everything you can to keep going in the direction you want the rubber band to go. When your friends and family start to act differently because you are changing, you may find resistance, “Well, I do not want to disappoint my friends or my family, so I guess I can’t start this today”. These levels of resistance will come in to stop you from starting what you set out to do.
Page 17
“Resistance obstructs movement only from a lower level to a higher one.”
What this means – if you want to be broke, for example go shopping and spend it all on a credit card and be in debt, there is no resistance there. You start get encouragement from your friends even, “You deserve it, you never spend any money on yourself”. So that is going to work in reverse. When you start to say, “I am going to pay off my credit cards, I am going to go on a spending halt”, the resistance kicks in. Because you are trying to move from a lower level to a higher one. Resistance tries to deter you from going on that mission. When you read a book like this, you ask yourself, “Do I have forces of resistance like this in my life?” Like when you are trying to learn the stock market, you have so many excuses – “Oh, I’m tired, I deserve to relax, I worked all day”, etc. Resistance will try and stop you from moving from your current level to a higher level.
Page 12
“Resistance will unfailingly point to true north. We can use this as a compass to navigate what actions we must follow before all others.”
The greater the resistance, the more definite that is the direction you need to go. I love looking at resistance, problems, issues, as reasons why this is tough, because this is the thing you need to do.
I remember one time when I was in Network Marketing, Patrick Maser asked, “How bad do you want it?” Something bad will always get in your way and you have to move through each hurdle. Then finally it become where you go through all hurdles and finally resistance stops. Sometimes we go through tests to determine if we truly want what we said we wanted. Do you really want to learn how the stock market works? Do you really want to become wealthy? Or is it like Eric Thomas said, “Is that just something you are saying with your mouth?” And your actions don’t follow? Resistance will tell you exactly what you need to do – whatever it is that is the most difficult.
Page 21
“Procrastination is the most common form of resistance because it is the easiest to rationalize”
We don’t say, “I am never going to get started in the stock market.” We just say, “I am going to get started tomorrow.”
Rationalization is the most common form of resistance because we start to reason why we can’t get started. “I don’t have the money, the time, etc to get started in the stock market”. The thing that is deadly about that – is that they kind of make sense. We can wake up the next day and feel good about the decision that we didn’t get started because of XYZ.
But there is NEVER a good time to get started. My mentor once told me: “Waiting for a good time to get started is like waiting for the street lights to all turn green before you start your trip.” You just need to start on the journey. I have definitely done that before… “I am going to start next week, next year”.
Page 38
“If you find yourself criticizing other people, you are probably doing it out of resistance… When most people see others beginning to live their authentic selves, it drives us crazy if we have not lived out our own”
When I am on social media, everyone has an opinion. Especially when you are trying to do something positive. Like I try to teach people about the stock market, and a lot of people have an opinion “If you knew how it worked, you wouldn’t really teach it, you would keep it to yourself.” People can say the craziest things. Or they just criticize people. The reality is, they wish they could go on the microphone or had the confidence to get in front of a camera and just go for it. Do you know how much guts it takes to put yourself out there for the whole world to judge your message? It is so easy for those people to sit on the sidelines, but secretly these people wish they could go after the life they wanted.
It is kind of like when you go to a club – you see all the “cool” people sitting on the sidelines, then you have someone in the middle of the dance floor set apart from the rest just dancing away. I have seen this before – the “cool” guys judge the one on the dance floor, thinking he is looking like a fool. The reality is, they wish they had the nerve to just go out there and not care what people think of you. It is the same thing with the stock market, people will criticize you and wonder what you are doing, but the reality is they wish they could go after what they truly wanted.
Most of these people will end up saying, “I always knew you could do it.” It is funny how the people who give you grief while you are trying to accomplish a goal, will end up having confidence in you when you succeed. Leave a comment below if you can relate to that.
Page 40
“Fear is good. Like self-doubt, fear is an indicator that tells us what we have to do. The more scared we are of the work, the more sure we can be that we have to do it.”
I think about it like this: when we fear the stock market, of being wrong, of losing money, but the more you fear it, the more you can be sure that you have to do it. Whether you fear it or not, do you have to plan for your retirement? Do you have a 401K plan? You either get to face it now or later. Look at fear as an indicator that I must be sure at some point I need to face this. You are going to have to deal with it at some point, why not deal with it now, head-on?
When I tell people I teach about the stock market, nothing drives me crazier when someone replies, “I need to learn about it, but not right now, I do not want to worry about it”. You will have to do with this someday. Face the fear now.
Page 48
“The athlete knows the day will never come when he wakes up pain free. He has to play hurt.”
The athlete does not plan the game only when he feels great – no, they play hurt, they play in pain, it is a part of the game. They know this is the path that they have chosen and they need to muscle through it.
If you are waiting for the day that you stop fearing to lose money, that day will never come. It doesn’t go away – what is important is that you manage the fear. Learn how to play hurt. It never fully goes away – just learn to play with it.
Be sure to pick this book up, you can click here to check it out on Amazon. This is an affiliate link so you also will be supporting the show. It is not about the stock market, but this is so important to be successful as a human and the mentality you need to have to be successful in the stock market. If you are not into reading, check out the audio version, too.
You can also check out one of my on demand trainings where I breakdown how to get started in the stock market, the three most important things every investor should know, how to use call and put options and I even share some real examples from my real trading account so you can see what’s possible. Click here to register for one of the upcoming trainings.