Being still in the infant stages of this blog, this 1% Plan, this adventure, feels like the right thing to do to dig a bit deeper into Why.
- Why did I start a blog, the most public of venues to talk about things that aren’t necessarily so public.
- Why is the 18 month plan so important to me
- Why do I continue to race triathlon as my body continues to rebel
Why start a blog?
This blog is the unexpected side effect of finding a therapist earlier this year.
I began therapy seven months ago, ostensibly to deal with the insanity of a particular work situation I found myself in, one unlike any other I had dealt with before. I began to question my ability to read people, which had always been a strong suit.
Therapy delivered the side of benefits of helping me process my work stress, safeguard myself against self-sabotage – be it work, marriage, family or friends – and augment my AA Program.
Rebuilding after a self-sabotaged teardown was my only normal.
Therapy doesn’t work for me.
I am True Believer in therapy, I know it works. For you.
It can’t work for me, I tried it. Sort of. My last experience in therapy was in 2014; I went into every session unloading all of my problems while simultaneously leaving out the trivial detail that I was a binge drinker and had a problem I could not manage.
It was just a wasted opportunity and really a waste of both of our time (although to be fair she did get paid $150 an hour) because it probably prolonged my drinking career for another few years.
So correction, the half-measure variety of therapy doesn’t work for me.
Telling most of the truth became the normal way of life.
Can we talk about it on Tuesday?
A lesson I learned over the last 8 years came from my AA sponsor. When I first came into the Program, I came in hot. I had a lot of urgent issues, that absolutely had to be discussed at length and fixed immediately. I was extremely uncomfortable being even a little uncomfortable. Every time I would email, call or text him with that day’s big, pressing issue, he would say the same thing –
Can we talk about it on Tuesday?
We used to meet each Tuesday. And invariably by the time each Tuesday rolled around, I had forgotten whatever that thing was. Sometimes, this would happen on Tuesday and I would forget by later on Tuesday.
And it took a year or so before I figured out his trick. Now, I apply that mind trick to therapy and I try to apply it liberally to all of my problems. Since I see my therapist every Thursday morning, can it wait until Thursday morning?
Turns out everything can wait until Thursday morning. So I keep a notebook and as these things pile up I jot them down and when I get up early on Thursday morning before anyone else but the dog I look at that list and I smile and I realize the silliness of the things that were so big and so pressing and so urgent just a week or a day ago.
I just need to figure it out.
Late last year, though, as I navigated that work situation, I watched more and more of my character defects and tells crop up:
- Skipping my morning meditation
- Getting up at 2am with a racing mind
- Playing out imaginary situations and arguments over and over again
- Shutting my office door
- Not eating lunch with my co-workers
- Sarcasm at home
- Obsessive exercise, obsessive eating, obsessive everything
- Isolation
- Focus on my 10 year budget spreadsheet
- Me vs the World
Something needed to change and that something began with me. I knew I could not just figure this thing out with a journal and a pocketful of hope anymore than I could figure out how to lower my 263 cholesterol to 200 by eating salads.
The first step is not admitting you have a problem; the first step is admitting you have a problem AND that your life is unmanageable.
The Search
I set a few criteria when I went looking for the right therapist –
- A guy because I never find myself trying to be witty and charming when I am talking to a guy.
- Within 5 miles of my house, let’s keep my excuses not to go to a minimum.
- Must accept my insurance, because I am nothing if not cheap.
- Well educated, sort of Robin Williams to my Matt Damon.
And as I whittled the list down, one guy caught my eye, mainly due to his experience with Psychological Operations in the Navy. I figured if this guy could get into the heads of Seal Team Six, maybe just maybe he could figure me out.
I called the office and asked his assistant point blank – hey, this guy kind of looks like a jerk, is he? She replied – he’s not for everyone.
I knew I had found my guy.
Zero Day
The first appointment went mainly how first appointments go, pleasantries and background info, but this also would be the first first appointment I can remember where a professional (or anyone for that matter) referred to me as – and I think I quote here – a f&^%king idiot. For context, this was probably in response to one of my several great ideas slash character defects and to be fair, I can be a f*&^king idiot.
What was interesting was that this talk therapy quickly became something different from any talk therapy I had experienced. We talked about concrete, real life issues I was facing and discussed concrete, real life solutions and approaches to each. One of my hesitations about going into therapy in the first place was spending an hour talking about how I was feeling as opposed to spending an hour talking about what I was doing.
The Process, not the Results
I have never been a life coach person. I have met many and almost always walked with the impression that a life coach is more of a “do as I say even though I never did anything” kind of situation. At some point though, these therapy sessions began to feel like what I would hope a life coach could be. I bring my very real, very present issues and we discuss them. We talk about work, we talk about marriage, we talk about stock trading and his words carry weight with me because not only do I like him but he has been there. This is someone who has done tours in the Middle East, who is brought in by big companies to solve big problems and I value what he says.
He has pointed out my blind spots – especially at work and at home – and has helped me mitigate risk in both areas. I really don’t want to end up folding towels in a gym like I did in college.
The biggest benefit to date is one I did not see coming, this blog itself.
We spend a fair bit of time talking about the stock trading and how it affects my mood, my decision-making, every aspect of my life really. The first important thing is that we knows what I am talking about. There are many people in my life – scratch, virtually everyone in my life – check out as soon as I start talking about options trading. It doesn’t make much sense to them and they are not at all interested and frankly I don’t blame them. I get bored thinking about it, let alone verbally explaining it. If I had to do that in therapy, it would not be a seamless transaction.
But he gets it and he got it from our first appointment, skipping a lot of steps.
That in mind, over the weeks and months as we began laying out my 1 year plan (what morphed into this 18 month plan), it occurred to me that if talking about this with one person was good, talking about this with the entire internet might be even better and hence this blog. I have written extensively how this blog has shaped my trading, refined my plan and improved my life.
If I know you are watching me, I am going to try a little harder and do a little better than if you weren’t.
July 20 Post
3 weeks in, this rat in a cage can verify that the Hawthorne Effect is a real thing.
Where do we go from here?
This is usually the part where I sabotage; I am not great with the long haul. Building things up in order to tear them down was more my thing. But this is about patterns and it’s about stability. Maybe it’s time to choose stable.
Compound interest only works when you don’t make withdrawals.