What is an addiction?
Addiction is a mental and physical inability to stop consuming a chemical or doing an activity, even though it is causing mental and physical harm.
An addictive activity is something we do compulsively and do not have control over.
We generally believe that addiction activities include the likes of smoking, drinking, and gambling.
However, there are other activities that can be classified as per this definition.
Social Media:
Do you notice that these days people are staring mindlessly into their mobile phone screens? This occurs all the time, regardless of where you live.
Smart engineers from social media companies are programming their applications to make them more addictive day by day.
Likes and comments on platforms like Facebook, Instagram and twitter are designed to make users keep coming back to check social approval of their activities. This is just one such tool.
Snapchat users “streaks”, which is the number of days the user has spoken with another through the application to make it addictive. Instagram holds back likes and delivers them in a sudden burst (like a casino slot machine random rewards) to give users a feeling of happiness.
Kindly note that these social media companies do not charge us. They only ask permission for them to use our personal data.
These companies make money by holding our attention for as long as possible and sell our data to advertisers; they compete to keep us hooked.
What are we losing?
- Our time is a finite resource. No amount of money can get it back.
- We are unable to do deep work that requires us to get immersed in an activity for long.
- Teenagers are unable to learn real social skills that only comes from interacting with people in the real world.
- Every notification adds to stress hormones in our body. This has detrimental impacts on our health.
- We are unable to talk to our real friends and life partner without staring at our phone.
If you are unable to keep your phone down for long and begin to feel anxious if a phone is not accessible, you are addicted.
Trading:
We earn money from our core professional activity (Job/business). We then save and invest this money based on tips and news channel recommendations. We then lose it all by trading or investing without learning.
Are you investing even though your past trading records show that you are losing money consistently?
If yes then you are addicted to the activity. This is like gambling.
Trading is an activity in which a rank amateur is competing with professionals. They have no chance to win in the long run.
This amateur versus professional competition is generally not allowed in any other field.
Employees compete with other employees at similar levels. Sports, too, have different levels and amateurs cannot compete with top professionals.
The entry barrier is very low in this field. You do not require any qualification to trade. The broker just wants you to fill some forms and deposit money to allow you to invest. He is only interested in his brokerage not in your wealth creation.
Trading needs to be structured as a process. Such a process can then be checked for profitability and improved.
Trading is highly profitable provided it is treated as a business. One needs to learn before getting into such a competitive field. Learning it requires similar effort, time and attention like any other money-making profession such as Law, Medicine, and Engineering.
I came across ads indicating that one can earn one lakh every month by investing one lakh with people who claim to be a Professional Money Manager.
Such Money Managers will vanish once they collect enough money from ignorant.
If you are being guaranteed a profit by a finance professional, be skeptical. If one can earn a large profit without much risk, they do not need your money. They can borrow from banks at low-interest rates and pocket the difference.
We train the traders/investors to trade based on our tested trading systems. We help them to become independent in trading.