the map is not the territory

the map is not the territory


I was re-reading my trading books, the new market wizard, looking through the chapter on psychology.

The chapter was about how NLP is able to help traders.

So, they intro what NLP is all about, and mention the 5 essential principles of NLP, of which, the first is:


"The map is not the territory"


The map is our thoughts and feelings. The territory is the reality.

We respond with our thoughts and Feelings to reality, we don respond to reality.

This is good, as it possible to get a better map - a better way to think and feel.


In my personal experience with life, it true that we react, decide and make decision more on feelings than on fact and reality.

Think of the people who queue up at Singapore pools buying the million dollar Toto draw. They all know the odds of winning the grand price is extremely extremely small,  but yet, the excitement and the desire for the million dollar trump their rational thinking, that they have close to 0% chance of winning...

I'm not saying to always have the perfect map, but perhaps, it may be easier to overcome the difficult times when you do slight alteration to your map.