Taking on full responsibility

The recent mrt episodes in Singapore highlighted a couple of bias that can be equally applicable in the investment/trading mentality. I saw some report saying that since the CEO had been in the company, the company had grew its profit from xxx to yyy per annum. This implied that the CEO is responsible for creating the profits. But when the spate of incidents causing the train to breakdown happened, there's no report saying that the CEO is responsible for it. I mean, why is it so easy to attribute good things to the CEO but not the bad things?



Will that happen to people who invests or trades too? I guess so. When the stocks that you bought went up, it was a good call or a good investment decision. You picked a stock that ran up, so you are good. But when the call turns sour, you start blaming the general investment sentiments, or the euro crisis, or the fact that you are not there to execute the orders, or that you are busy with work. A thousand and one event happened to prevent you from making the right decision, it seems to me. That's just self delusional.

If you keep on coming up with excuses on why you cannot do this or that, then perhaps you are shifting the blame to anything or anyone but yourself. By doing so, you are empowering others, making yourself a victim of the circumstances. Playing the victim is such a good role to play, it would seem to me, because a lot of people like to complain about their lot in life. Okay, granted that everyone needs a space to vent out their frustration and to release the emotional steam that builds up inside you. But what do people do after they complained? They'll just go about doing the same thing again. If you keep doing what you have been doing, you will keep on getting what you have been getting. I don't know about you, but I try to distance myself far from such people because they tend to be quite infectious in their negativity. I call them vampires - real life vampires do not suck blood, they suck energy from people around them and make others vampires too.



So, this coming new year, how about putting up a resolution to change this mentality? Instead of thinking that "I could do this if only _____", how about thinking that "I could do this by doing _____". Only by taking full responsibility of your situation can you empower yourself to do the necessary changes to improve it. Unless you're contented at playing the victim, of course.