Friday The 13th

6 days ago

Most likely some of you are going to smile seeing the title. I would too, if I wouldn't know what this post is about, but as I'm the author ... well, I'm laughing too anyway, but for a different reason.

Yesterday was February the 13th, which for many superstitious people, it's a very bad day. I'm not superstitious and sometimes don't even realize it's Friday the 13th, but today I knew it and had to make a decision. It was the last day of trading as traditional markets are closed during the weekend. It was also a red folder day as we had economic data coming in, which meant a difficult day with potentially high volatility and trouble. I'm avoiding using the word we usually use in trading as I'd have to beep out the majority of it and it's not nice for a lady to use such words, but this is a tough world, I mean the world of trading.

Photo by Donny Jiang on Unsplash

After checking the charts, I decided to still trade. At the end of the day (literally), I had 8.8R. For those who are not familiar with what R means in trading, it's the risk to reward ratio, that measures potential profit against potential loss. I had 5 trades, scalping the three minutes and five minutes charts, four shorts and one long, all wins, no losses. 8.8R may not seem much to those who don't understand the world of trading, but imagine there are people blowing up their accounts, one after the other, I also know someone who rates himself, while barely making 82R a year, so trust me, I'd take 8.8R any day, but this is not what I want to write about today.

After I finished journaling my trades, was thinking, how so many people chose to blindly believe in different things and sabotage themselves, or use different excuses to mask their fear or many times their incompetence.

Photo by Darren Faulkner on Unsplash

Regarding superstition, there was a report in the news a good few years ago, about a man, who chose not to go to work on Friday the 13th, to protect himself of what might happen. Instead, he set in his front yard, but life is funny sometimes and while drinking his coffee, he did not notice there was a bee on his cup. A fatal mistake as he was allergic to bees and met his maker the very same day. The ambulance could do nothing for him anymore. So staying home to avoid trouble did not serve for much in his case. Paying attention would have kept him alive thought.

The other thing that I will never understand is how can people blindly believe in horoscopes and tailor their days based on that nonsense. Boxing people in twelve categories and believing there are twelve stencils people were made with is an insult in my eyes. Everyone deserves to be judged for what they are, what they do, not for some nonsense some people write.

Photo by James Lee on Unsplash

Finding excuses is easy. Very easy in fact and I'll give you an example. Years ago, when I was actively jogging, we had a very special person in out running group. Szilvia Lubics, a dentist, mother of three kids, with an impressive sports career. She has won the Ultrabalaton, an ultramarathon running competition (which means 221km around the lake Balaton) twice, and has come second also twice but this is not all. She has won Spartathlon (a 246km ultramarathon race held annually in Greece since 1983) three times and has come third two times. You can imagine her life with family, kids, her profession, trainings and competitions.

At that time she was living in a small Hungarian village, where she was working and training as well, which meant running around the athletic pitch as early as 6am, to be able to do everything that was on her schedule. Once she wrote in the group, how the village women are gossiping her, saying she has time to waste, and she said, *it's easy to find excuses why you don't do something, but with a bit of organizing, you can do everything" and she was so right.

Photo by roman ten on Unsplash

I remember when I started jogging, had a 5km plan broken down to 3 days or training per week. One day it was raining and I didn't know what to do, so I asked in the group. There was a trainer who used to train star athletes and he replied "do you think running or jobbing is an indoor sport?" 😆 His reply seems cheeky at first glance, but he was so right and I needed that. I can assure you, running in the rain is the best thing you can do, feeling that freedom is priceless and guess what? I had my first running competition in a pouring rain and I had the time of my life.

Life is what you make it to be. You can find excuses to not do certain things, you can blame others as well, but at the end of the day, no one is going to create the life you want for you. If you don't fight for it, no one will. Oh, by the way, everyone is an example, you just have to decide if they are a good example, or a bad one, then you know who to follow or learn from, to get where you want.