Shannon's Journal Discussion Thread, Vol. 5

[Shannon]

I can tell you my experience with the previous MLS, and the current one will be an extension so it should be helpful. 

On MLS you'll have a deep desire to learn about anything you want to, and studying will come in any form that is useful to what you're trying to learn. If you want to box for example, I found that my ability to mirror good boxers body movement and and practice their techniques enhanced greatly, I would naturally slip into a place where I would watch and emulate without even consciously deciding to (like I was in a trance like concentration), and automatically become better. 

You'll be able to connect dots and create mental models in a way which allows you to not only learn something, but learn it quickly and efficiently, and that skill in developing mental models/connecting dots is hyper useful in any mental domain. For trading you'll find you can visualise price movements and how different types of moving averages will move in line with those movements (something that I found I was able to do when I was on it previously). You will absolutely recognise patterns, solve problems and learn from mistakes - on the last point you'll actually remember mistakes you'd forgotten and wonder how you ever made them since the mistake was so obvious .

The main problem i ended up with was sticking with a couple of things and not tyring to learn absolutely everything. I also self sabotaged through over eating, stonewalling and other things which i won't get into. 

If you manage to not self sabotage in some way then when this works it's like the world becomes an interesting place of possibility and there's no real mental limit on what you can learn/do.

Sh!t dude - thats amazing.. I use price and moving averages.. and would love to box too.. thanks bro..

Did this happen quickly or only after you finished the program? also, how is your learning ability now? I mean can you still box or trade the stuff you "learnt" while on the program?

The abilities improved over the course of the programme; with motivation to learn coming immediately as well as an increase in intelligence which became very clear at work. I ran into problems though as i clearly started self sabotaging. For example I have an intolerance to gluten and wheat which when I eat them turn me into a zombie and I went from a completely gluten/wheat free and sugar free diet to indulging in these all the time; so the results were not consistent. I also started not doing the course according to specifications, missing days etc. This was my resistance and I put it down to -

(1) a fear of being powerful. having this ability made me feel unconstrained and i didn't know how to handle it
(2) fear of loss of control. similar to the above, but the change was very significant and made me feel out of control of what was happening
(3) ego identification. The improvement in intelligence was delicious for my ego, and I became very involved with the 'idea' or 'identity' of being a smart person, again this was a change in who I was which I resisted.

This isn't IML advice, so if Ben/Shannon want me to remove it I can but I found a personal journal helps where you ask yourself a few questions. The questions that help me are
 - Why do I not want to achieve the goals of the programme?
 - What do I gain from not achieving the goals of the programme?
 - What do I lose from achieving the goals of the programme?
 - How real are these reasons, are they worth not achieving the goals of the programme?
 - Can I accept the consequences of executing the programme?


The above is surprisingly difficult to do, I've found some painful negative beliefs about myself and the world which don't have much basis in reality but are none the less hard to shift. Again this is just personal experience and nothing to do with advice from IML. 

As regards practicing what I learned, I started USLM after MLS which is a long story of misadventure so in short no. At the time, I had a coach teaching me trading who couldn't get over how quickly i was absorbing information and thought I had some form of psychic ability and wanted to work with me. At the end of the course I'd stopped using MLS and he was shocked because I was no longer demonstrating what I had, he kept asking me what happened and was genuinely sad because he thought he'd found a valuable business partner. 

Basically if you do MLS according to instructions and take some steps to get out of your own way, there's no reason to not experience all of the results whilst using it. I don't have experience of results post the sub.

One thing I'd like to point out is that this is exactly what I was working on correcting in MLS 4.0.  That's why it has a heavy dose of FRM and uses DRS.  It's designed to improve on everything V3 did well, and correct everything it did not do well.  It actually has more focus on FRM than OF v2, which was quite a shock to see coming out of the models again, and again, and again... I have only ever seen that happen one other time, and that was with a sub focused on sex.  There is a lot of fear involved in getting to sex and achieving one's full potential.  

So don't think you need to do OF before MLS 4.  MLS 4 should take care of that for you.