Though my road has been very different, it seems to me that Nowler is in pretty good hands with both NVP and Malaguti. Quite a lot of what they've both been saying resonates with me though perhaps from a slightly different perspective:
The littIe work I do these days often includes aspects of the psychology of learning. I have been interested in practical psychology from both an amateur and professional standpoint for quite some time (i.e decades rather than years) and I'd say that NVP's point above at n°1 is a goodie - there are only two kinds of arrogance, the first being that of Ignorance and Stupidity and the second is that of Brilliance or Genius. The tragedy is that we humans are not very good at seeing where we sit on the spectrum. Most of us are neither complete idiots (though even T2W has had the odd one...and a couple have been very odd indeed) nor are we rocket scientists. Whilst it's not really a recommendation to be humble, I would say that for all of us, understanding how little we truly know about anything helps us to be more open-minded and reflective. The identity of the person with knowledge is irrelevant and it is the knowledge itself which matters with the other half of the equation being the ability to transform that knowledge into sagacity/wisdom.
With regard to life-coaches and brain training etc - I admit to be a tad sceptical about a lot of these folk but again that's due to my path. My interest in psychology began when during my schooldays I realised that, for some reason, I couldn't remember lessons if I took notes. If I didn't take any notes I could recall things much better. Having an OK memory helped me scrape through my A levels but I definitely had a problem. A few years after leaving school I found myself working in radio doing local reporting - which involved ad libbing live stuff. Again, I was quite good as long as I didn't try and do it from notes because then I'd just end up try to read them and making a dog's breakfast of it.
The above embarassing experience(s) led to me seeing a hypnotherapist to try and understand what my problem was, why I had it and what to do about it. I was extremely lucky in that the one I ended up seeing quite literally changed my life in a matter of weeks. I went from having an alright memory to having a much much better and markedly different one..... and that was the start of my involvement in psychology. I can say without a shadow of doubt that not only is a good memory an aid to intelligence but it can also be a really good substitute. Some 40+ years later, I still use the techniques that I learned then and I recognise echoes of them in every life-coach/self-improvement video or presentation I've ever seen. However brilliant and altruistic or simplistic and mercenary these guys are, is not relevant - what matters is whether they can transmit the knowledge they have. If they can and one benefits, that is the only thing that counts....but if they can't, then it doesn't matter how famous or successful, how much you pay for the course, - they're rubbish and a waste of time and money.
Hypnosis is a perfectly natural state of consciousness and can be constructively used for self-improvement and self-management including a vast range of conditions that are often considered by the layman to be "hard-wired" and rigidly fixed - a few examples, would be: attention deficit, poor memory, dyslexia, stammering, phobia, laziness.....and yes, indirectly, it can be used to improve one's trading
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