Communicator

you could have both productivity and sustainability? Reducing water usage is an important goal for the Beverage Industry around the world. Eliminating water and lubrication from conveyor systems is a proven method of achieving this goal! Visit us at www.RegalPTS.com/beverage At Regal... Discover new ways to keep your bottling lines moving and help conserve resources. Sealmaster and System Plast are trademarks of Regal Beloit Corporation or one of its affiliated companies. ©2016 Regal Beloit Corporation, All Rights Reserved. MCAD16005E • 9961E Camille Sweeney and Josh Gosfield are the authors of The Art of Doing: How Superachievers Do What They Do and How They Do It So Well. And what about losing? We know what losing feels like. We are sickened, hollowed out and feel less worthy than the lowest cock- roach on the cockroach totem pole. When filled with cortisol, Coates explains, "we find danger where none exists," and we have what he calls "irrational risk aversion." Just as the testosterone primes us to keep winning, cortisol primes us to prematurely quit. These feelings of winning or losing eman- ate mostly from our gut – the grumbling cauldron of the stomach, the central process- ing unit of so many neurons that are sensitive to testosterone and cortisol. The gut, some- times known as the second brain, speaks to us not with logic but with a guttural language that is hard to ignore, geysering up inside us with overwhelming feelings that sometimes vault us to heaven with elation and at other times poison us with panic and fear. So are we doomed to be whipsawed between the irrational exuberance of testosterone and the irrational risk aversion of cortisol? To understand how to handle the emo- tional ups and downs of winning and losing, let's return to Altucher. By 2003, after recovering from his losses, he had slowly built up his reserves and was trading in the futures market. One night at 3 a.m. he heard about a terrorist attack in Turkey on the news. Bombings in Istanbul? September 11 was still a raw memory and weighed heavily on everyone's minds. Traders were panick- ing. The futures market was collapsing. Altucher, shot through with cortisol, said to himself, "My life is over." Shaking and in a panic, he sold all his holdings. That's what happens when a market collapses – collective panic. Investors all turn into cortisol-quitters at the same time because they believe that the prices of whatever they own – stocks, gold, tulips or real estate – are going to go down, and go down fast. But guess what hap- pened? Altucher may have still been shaking, but somehow he constrained his panic and managed to take a clear-eyed, rational look at the actual conditions of the market. He asked himself, "What will be the long-term effect of a bombing in Turkey on the stock prices of American companies? Probably, not much." While everyone else was selling, Altucher bought back what he had sold and then he doubled down and kept buying. It was one of his best trading months ever. Every investment guru warns aspiring traders that if they expect to win they have to avoid the danger of getting caught up in the testosterone-boom/cortisol-bust cycle, buying on a cloud of euphoria or selling in the hard fear of panic. Those hormonal urges to buy or sell can be overwhelming. We are just like those traders. We have to be prepared for the emotional whiplash of the boom-and-bust cycle, the ups and downs that will make us feel at times like we are making a million bucks a day and at other times like we are losing everything. MI

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