The Little "I"

(Taken from Van Tharp Newsletter 4/23/08)

This is the “myself” portion of our “me, myself and I” equation. I write it as “my self”, separating the words. This “separated self” or little “i” is actually a program that has separated from the Big I during our formative years as a result believing faulty and erroneous information. This misinformation might have come from the outside when a parent remarked, “You’ll never amount to anything” and you believed it. From that time forward, this person might not try out for the school play or go out for track thinking" I won’t make it anyway, so why try?"
Another source of faulty information has its origin in our own self-talk: things we tell ourselves. For example, when we volunteered a wrong answer in school and the teacher loudly proclaimed that our answer was way off track, we might have thought “How could I be so stupid?” and decided never to participate in school again.
These programs continue to fire off unconsciously until we do our inner work. That is exactly why Van’s curriculum includes the so much education about trading psychology. Traders need to know how to discern which “I” is pulling the trigger when they trade and what to do if the wrong one is running the show!!
The Holy Grail, then, is trading with the scout and the captain in alignment—that is, the “I and me” in agreement. In our ship metaphor, this translates to the scout shouting down sound information from the crow’s nest followed by the captain making good decisions based upon it. That IS the Holy Grail. You need look no further than within.
The catch is that we must clear out and rid ourselves of the little “i”s steering us into the rocks. It is not useful to hear thoughts like, “What if this is another loser like the last two?” and then miss an opportunity by not taking the trade.

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