Bald Headed Midgets

Have you ever noticed how your emotional state can affect everything around you? How you see things, how you act, how successful you are; your immune system or how quickly a wound can heal?

I remember a day in the early 1990’s at the Royal Marsden Hospital in London. I was there for my weekly check up to make sure the cancer I had been operated on for hadn’t spread. I had also had a round of chemotherapy the previous month and all my hair had dropped out. Actually it hadn’t completely dropped out but since only a few tufts and patches were left I had taken a clipper and razor to my scalp and lopped off the remainder.

I was feeling pretty sorry for myself and quite low. Although the odds were on my side I wasn’t sure I was going to pull through. I felt dreadful, and felt I looked dreadful too.

After my appointment at the out patients clinic I took a wrong turning and happened to come down a different stairway than usual. I had been looking at my feet rather than ahead when I became aware of something odd going on around me. I looked up and was astonished to see I was in a room full of bald headed midgets!

I stood there in a daze for a couple of minutes staring around me. For a while I couldn’t work out what I was seeing. Was this an effect of the drugs I had been given? It seemed I had been transported to the set of the Wizard of Oz and had become a part of Munchkin Land. Was I actually hallucinating? Well, no actually.

I had simply happened upon the children’s ward. You see the Royal Marsden is dedicated to Oncology; everyone there was being treated for some form of cancer and here were the kids playing, laughing and generally having a good time, just like kids do. They didn’t seem fussed by how they looked with their fuzzy or shiny little heads. They also didn’t seem to be considering the odds of imminent death too seriously, not like I was anyway.

A few years later I was running a goal setting workshop. I asked the delegates to consider what success meant to them. I got a variety of answers as you always do. I remember one futures trader telling me “I will be successful when my yearly income is over a million. I keep trying but I don’t seem able to get there”.

You know trading is not all about strategy and technique; it’s about the whole deal. You are the most important element in the success equation and where you head’s at is important too. I was fascinated by another guy’s answer to the same question; he said success to him was “Every day spent above ground”. Short and sweet that!

I earn a good living but since surviving cancer I ‘play’ hard at maintaining a balanced and fulfilling lifestyle. Whenever things in my life seem to be getting a bit wobbly or out of kilter I remember the happy little bald headed midgets and think how lucky I am to be spending yet another day above ground.

© Jeff Turner