Ser positivos
Smile or Die: How Positive Thinking Fooled America and the World by Barbara Ehrenreich
The appropriate and mindful attitude of most investors should be a constant expectation of something going wrong, because our mindless reptilian brains will automatically gravitate to the sunny upsides of over-optimism given the slightest reason.
Generally the advocates of positive thinking are in the ascendency – they tell people something they want to hear, namely that you can have what you want merely by wishing for it. This is the magical law of attraction and not only can it impoverish investors directly it also does so indirectly, through its effects on managers and employees. Exercised as mind-control it’s repellent, unnatural and destructive.
It’s just profoundly depressing that so many people are caught in the embrace of an idea with about the same scientific justification as astrology. Worse, many of these people are the leaders of our corporations.
Frankly it’s hard to find anything positive to say about positivity. There are, perhaps, some health benefits in terms of less stress and worry, but it’s virtually impossible to pull out the genuine positives from the mass of confusing and subjective research in the area of positive psychology.
“The strong belief in opportunity and upward mobility is the explanation that is often given for Americans’ high tolerance for inequality: the majority of Americans surveyed believe that they will be above mean income in the future (even though that is a mathematical impossibility)”
“Mobility is lower in the U.S. than in the U.K., where it is lower again compared to the Nordic countries. Persistence is greatest in the tails of the distributions and tends to be particularly high in the upper tails: though in the U.S. this is reversed with a particularly high likelihood that sons of the poorest fathers will remain in the lowest earnings quintile… The U.S. also differs from the Nordic countries in its very low likelihood that sons of the highest earners will show downward ’longdistance’ mobility into the lowest earnings quintile.”
And no amount of positive thinking is likely to do much about this. Yet the whole, monstrous philosophy, is based a bizarre, pseudo-scientific idea known as the law of attraction which, to lay it bare, says that if you really, really wish for something you can have it. Want a new house? Then that low starter interest rate mortgage is just the ticket – after all, you’ll definitely be making more money by the time interest rates go up. Just believe in yourself.
Positivity isn’t a neutral thing; it leads to negative outcomes for firms, employees and shareholders. It also leads to intense short-termism. A consumer believing in the law of attraction may well “reward” themselves with the latest designer goods, ignoring the fact that the credit card has to be paid later. A manager adopting the same attitude will fire people with scarce skills and cut R&D in order to boost short-term earnings, share prices and, not inconsequentially, their bonuses. Positivity is about the here, and the now; the future is another country.
If, on the other hand, we believe we’re brilliant investors based on the magical thinking of the law of attraction then we will lose, and do so quite badly, as we outlined in Happy People Make Terrible Traders. We may also fail to notice that we’ve lost, because that’s what hindsight bias does to us. Positivity is positively bad for investors. Suspicion and a permanent expectation of stuff going wrong would be a better attitude of mind. Just don’t expect to find a positivity expert telling you that. It’s far easier to believe we can have what we want because we want it.
Source: The Psy-Fi Blog: Repellent; The Magical Law of Attraction
es bueno ser positivo pero sin dejar de ser realistas… porque si uno deja de ser realista por llenarse de positivismo, diría que más bien se está mintiendo a uno mismo!
más que al positivismo, daría más importancia a la motivación! es tannnnn fundamental la motivación en lo que se hace…
Completamente deacuerdo de que la motivacion es importantisima, una de las cosas mas importantes en esta vida, una persona muy motivada es muy probable que sea una persona feliz, una persona muy desmotivada, seguramente caiga en la depresion.
El optimismo y el pesimismo son desviaciones de la realidad, son autoenganos que te llevan a tomar decisiones basadas en supuestos erroneos.
"El pesimista se queja del viento; el optimista espera que cambie; el realista ajusta las velas"
que buena la frase que citas. muy buena!
El optimismo en el trading no funciona:
La determinación, el pensamiento positivo y la tozudez que hacen que la gente tenga éxito en otras áreas de su vida simplemente les predispone a que les destrocen en los mercados. Éste es el tipo de traders que se aferran obstinadamente a su posición perdedora, añadiendo a medida que baja, utilizando técnicas de pensamiento positivo para visualizar como al final este fiasco se convierte en una operación ganadora. Me da igual cuántas cintas de Tony Robbins7 escuchasen los empleados de Enron; no van a hacer que sus acciones vuelvan a los $90 por acción.