What if optimal psychology is found in spirituality?

Last year, I proposed a unique perspective on trading and investing: the mistakes that we make in financial markets are not primarily ones of emotional disruption and cognitive distortion. Rather, they are the results of ego-attachment. Our financial investments become ego investments when we gauge our success and predicate our well-being on our profitability. Once that happens, we fear missing winning trades, refuse to exit losing ones, oversize positions, and cut winning opportunities short. No amount of self-help can truly help us if the self has been hijacked by the ego.

In the blog-book that I subsequently wrote and posted online, Radical Renewal, I expanded on this thesis, illustrating how sound decisions in financial marketsand indeed in all of lifespring from the soul, not the ego. This may initially sound mystical and unbearably touchy-feely, but is actually quite objectively observable. Consider the role of idea generation among portfolio managers at the worlds leading hedge funds. These managers develop robust processes for removing themselves from biases and distractions, connecting to valuable sources of information, and then processing that information in novel ways. This creative process is far from ego-laden. Indeed, it often springs from cognitive activities remarkably similar to meditation and prayer: dampening internal chatter and allowing a different voice to emerge. The idea advanced in Radical Renewal is that the worlds great religious and spiritual traditions are a veritable gold mine of practices for moving beyond ego-laden self-talk and discovering soul-full wisdom. These traditions are perhaps the greatest crowdsourcing experiment in history, revealing perspectives and practices that have inspired and guided self-aware individuals for millennia.

Typical traders and investors think of losses in financial markets as problems and failures, and they predictably respond with frustration or fear. Suppose, however, that the investor believes that life itself is a series of lessons, with a curriculum guided by a Higher Power. Now, all of a sudden, losses become learning opportunities. The spiritually-inclined investor can actually respond to setbacks with gratitude: each loss is there to teach a lesson. Perhaps the loss teaches something about the markets or strategies being traded; perhaps it illuminates something about the implementation of those strategies. When progress is measured in terms of learning and development, there is no longer the same ego-attachment to short-term financial returns. The goal becomes learning and improving; what makes us successful money managers now aligns with what will help us manage and navigate opportunities throughout life.

I was delighted to learn from the University of Pennsylvania that one of its graduate students, David Bryce Yaden, has co-authored a text that explores the psychological underpinnings of the worlds major religious traditions. Yaden points out that there is more than just mindfulness and yoga out there: traditions specific to various traditions point the way beyond self-actualization to self-transcendence. He offers the example of the Jewish custom of sitting shiva, where a community comes together in the home of a member who has lost a loved one. This channeling of the grief process becomes not only a way of healing, but a way of connecting to others and the meaning and significance of the lost relative. Imagine dealing with all our major losses in such a fashion!

If spirituality can guide performance in a field as inherently materialistic as investing and trading, what can it do for performance in other areas of life, from relationships to career development? We have just scratched the surface of best practices in peak performance psychology and, ironically, theyve been hiding in plain sight in the churches, mosques, synagogues, temples, and spiritual communities of the world. Beyond self-help is a treasure of methods for self-transcendence.

Link:
What If The Key To Performance Psychology Is Spirituality? - Forbes