033 – Interview w Louise Bedford of Talking Trading

Hello and welcome to the Consistent Profits podcast brought to you by Inside out trading and Brian McAvoy, where the focus is on consistency because when you have the consistent part down, profits become easy. Hello everybody, this is Brian McAvoy with a new episode of the Consistent Profits podcast brought to you by Inside Out Trading. I'm really excited today to be interviewing Louise Bedford, creator of the Trading Game and Talking Trading. Louise, thank you so much for being on the podcast today.

Oh, it's just such an honor to be here. I'm so excited about your podcast, Brian.

Yeah, well, I've been, I've been really excited for a while. We've known each other for a while and, uh, you've, you know, you're pretty well established. Now for those of you who don't know Louise, she is a best selling author of five books on the stock market. She's one of Australia's most compelling speakers on the share market and has been trading the market since 1990. And she's also trained thousands of people to maximize their own trading potential. She's a behavioral finance expert and has degrees in psychology and business. She's been running the six month repeat for free mentor program called the Trading Game since the year 2000 and 20. And she's also the founder of Talking Trading, a free weekly pod trading podcast. Known as the corporate executive who lost the use of her arms and achieved financial freedom by trading with a pen in her mouth, she will inspire you to achieve your trading best. Her key area, her key areas of focus are using candlestick charts, trading psychology, pattern detection, the impact of neuropsychology on trading decisions and trading crisis management. Again, I've known Luis for a while and I have a lot of respect for her as both professional and a person. And I've always enjoyed the conversations we've had. Again, thanks for being Louise.

Absolute pleasure.

Now, you know, as far as, like your, you know, one of the challenges that's mentioned in your bio, you know, as far as, you know, losing the use of your arms and having to trade your way through that. So you know what it's like to overcome adversity and get back on top of things. I mean, we might as well just start right there because a lot of traders are struggling. And so, you know, what do you find are the key things to help traders get through challenges when they arise and minimize their impact?

I think habit formation is so important. Do you know, there's an interesting piece of research and it really inspired me. It said during the times that you're building habits, whether you're experiencing adversity or whether life is going smoothly, the next time you have adversity in your life, you'll resort to that habit, whether it is a good habit or, or a bad habit. So what does this mean? While things are in that habit formation stage, make sure you consciously choose the habits you want to commit to. Because when you go under pressure the next time you're going to resort to those habits. If you're used to running to get rid of your bad juju and you feel a lot better after a run, you're going to run your head off. Next time you face adversity, if perhaps you drink yourself into a stupor and that is your habit every night, you're going to double down on that and drink even more when you're under pressure next time. So that can make it quite within our own sphere of control with what we do for our future selves. Brian and I just love that. Create the right habits and then when you're under pressure, you will resort to those habits and you'll either be driven further, further ahead in life or you'll slip further behind.

Yeah, yeah. Interesting perspective. But I've heard lots of different kind of answers to, you know, similar questions. You know, as far as dealing with challenges and that first time I had heard anybody talk, bring up, talk about habits and. But yeah, I can see how that's really powerful now. I know you're also pretty health conscious. So I imagine you also, especially when you are dealing with some adversity, you're taking extra good care of yourself as well. As far as like, you know, what you eat and you sleep and getting some extra exercise and all that kind of stuff too.

Yeah, it's so important. And as traders, we often forget that. I think we don't realize we're in a high performance area and any high performance endeavor, we need to train as if we were an Olympian, where we look after our sleep, we look after our diet, we focus on being the best version of us that we can be. Now whenever we have all of those little plants places as like a little Snakes and Ladders game, which I'm not sure whether it's called Snakes and ladders in the U.S. but there's a game in Australia where you go forward bit by bit, but then you can sit on top of a snake and you slide all the way back down. So that game is a little bit like trading. You go forward bit by bit and if you do several wrong things in a row or even one big catastrophic thing you can go right back down to where you started. So to avoid that catastrophic event, we do need to look after all of those little 1% areas in our lives.

Yeah, indeed. Well, now, speaking of. And, and yeah, just FYI, yeah. In the US it's called chutes and ladders. They're like little playground slides.

That's it. I think we probably went with snakes because snakes are Australian, you know, in terms of trying to kill us. Maybe the traders here face a few other challenges.

Well, one, one area, and it's super common for traders, it winds up being one of the snakes that bites or you know, the slide that sends you back is self sabotage. And now, you know, of course there's a lot of traders, they'll get to a certain level of success and then they sabotage themselves. What are some of the top things that you see traders do to sabotage the results?

Look, traders have an uncanny ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. They get onto a roll, they have win after win after win, and then because their ego inflates, down they go. Now one of the things with self sabotage is it can be difficult to spot in yourself because you don't realize it's happening unless you've trained yourself to have that perspective. Now, one of the things I look out for, I mean, for me it's chocolate. Once I start over indulging in chocolate, oh my goodness. I just know that that's my warning sign. But some of the other aspects might be maxing out your credit card, indulging in online, shall we say, proclivities. It could be shopping too much. It might be buying a big purchase that you hadn't planned for and that you hadn't discussed. If you have a spouse, you hadn't discussed that purchase with your spouse. There are lots of ways that we can shoot ourselves in the foot and they're actually called sad behaviors. S A D. Now, have you heard of that, Brian? It's an interesting area of research.

I take it that's an acronym.

Yes, it is. It is. I think the thing to think of it, I think I like the idea of it being a sad behavior for a start, but it's a self aggressive and destructive behavior. Now it can start in a small way or if you miss the warning signs, it can end up in a big way harming your trading account. There are lots of things that you can do about this, but I do want to add in a little controversial method. And I've found this to be particularly successful for myself, weirdly, and this does sound counterintuitive with this is if you see yourself experiencing these self aggressive and destructive behaviors, one of the best things that you can do is, is to add stress to your life. Now that sounds weird, doesn't it? Because you think you're stressed, why would you add more stress? But if you add more stress in a short stint and in a subtle way, that can help you overcome those aggressive behaviors to yourself. So ways that you can add stress, let's give you perhaps an example. I notice when I'm eating just bucket loads of chocolate that once I notice that if I become aware of that and I add the stress of going to the gym more frequently, one extra routine per week won't kill me, but that extra pressure on my body makes me snap out of. Could be that you add stress by saying I'm going to bed at this particular time tonight and setting an alarm. Now that process of setting an alarm, we know that the alarm has stress involved once you wake up, but that setting of the alarm actually also has a little bit of stress involved. They've measured people in functional MRIs and even the setting of that alarm can be a pressure oriented action. So find a way that you can subtly add a small amount of stress but in a positive direction if you are on the brink of self sabotaging.

Interesting. Well, on the topic of self sabotage, one thing that I see happens all too often in trading is where not only will a person start sabotaging themselves and I've experienced this personal, I'm curious to get your take on it, but where a trader will start sabotaging themselves and they don't stop until they've completely blown out their account. It's not like they quit when they've lost, you know, half or even three quarters. Like it has to be like completely blown. I mean my experience was I actually had my account at about $47,000 when I started the cycle and I couldn't stop myself until it was clear down to 1700 and I had to stop. So what are your thoughts on that as far as why with traders we don't just sabotage, we'll sabotage it to ruin.

Won'T we? The interesting aspect here is that very few traders who have done that would find that that is an isolated occurrence. Often if they look back in their lives, there will be other areas where they have gone to excess. They have been that a type where they've pushed themselves past the point of pain and injured themselves. They have overspent in such a way that it has hurt them in some way and Often as traders, we do attract that type of personality. The level of conscious thinking that this requires tends to drain us. We can get a bit spent and when we're spent, we know that actually we become more animal. Like the conscious behaviors that we've tried to mask with become more instinctive. And that is the risk. That is the risk because we're trying to focus on our cerebral cortex, the outside of our brain. That part is the most modern part of our brain. And we're trying to stay away from that very central core of our brain. And that's more animalistic. The thing with this, I do suggest to people who have got that self sabotage urge and they're noticing it in their trading. Become aware of the other areas of your life that have actually had that trait occur and come forward in the past. You'll see that it's not just trading. There will be other areas and maybe it's time for you to rethink that introspectively. Think of the triggers that led you to that type of behavior. Understanding those triggers and your reaction to those triggers, that is such a missing step for so many traders. If we can look at that and realize what we have on our plate that it could recur, we can recognize those triggers earlier in the future.

Huh. That's a pretty cool perspective. Hadn't thought about that. What are your thoughts about sometimes? Because I had this conversation with a buddy of mine. He did an experiment where he wanted to see what stress did to us trading and to him. And so he intentionally put himself in a stressful situation even though he was a competent and successful trader. And so he did the stress experiment and, and what came out of the conversation with that was going because when it first, when he first started into it, he was just making some mistakes. It wasn't really hurting too bad. And then, you know, after a couple more weeks, he's making big mistakes. He's starting to lose money now. And then it finally got to the point where, yeah, he's just, just out of control and he had to stop. And so what we came, what we kind of came to as a conclusion out of that experiment was that it's kind of like when you're a workaholic and you just work too much and your body says, hey, we just can't deal with this stress. And so we're going to force you to take a break. And that was one perspective that we found. Okay, well some traders, maybe that's why they blow out their account is because it's their subconscious as a Survival mechanism. It's like we're going to force you to stop trading because it's so stressful on you and it's just. But yeah, it's like you're not stopping, so we're going to stop you by blowing, by taking away your account. What are your thoughts on that?

Yeah, I think it's incredibly accurate. I do think one of the aspects here is often the way we do one thing is the way we do everything. So that process is quite fascinating, isn't it? I do believe as well that people often work towards the vision that they have for themselves. And what you're talking about here, it smacks to me of a financial thermostat level where sometimes, and in my own trading I kept on getting up to this certain level of equity and then I'd drop back down and I'd get back again and I'd drop back down and interestingly, I mean there's no coincidence with this, but it was around the profit that I received in my final year of working a corporate job. Once I hit that, it seems that I dropped off because I had anchored my profit potential to this arbitrary point. And that arbitrary point had nothing to do with what my potential was. It had everything to do with what my past behaviour had permitted. So I do think it's a good idea to examine your money scripts, work out what does good look like for you in terms of your finances? If earning $30,000 a year is what you're after, usually your trading will reflect that and you'll have trouble getting over that hump. So let's talk about some strategies there and I'll be very keen to hear your views. Brian, One of the things that I did after I realized I was hitting this ceiling, they trained fleas in a flea circus by just leaving the lid on and they hit their head enough times and then before you know it, they'll never jump higher. I was like that flea. And I delegated parts of my money to different portfolios. So I started keeping three portfolios clearly with less balance in each. And what that allowed me to do is to still feel scrappy and hungry and ready for action. Because those equity levels didn't seem too big for where I was prepared to go emotionally. That worked a trick. That for me was the thing that made a huge difference. And perhaps the other aspect to mention is with that final portfolio, that smaller portfolio that I keep, I consider that to be a high risk portfolio. So I have a smaller amount of money, I take some shorter term positions or if I'M testing out a trading system. I'll put money into it in that smaller portfolio and it will be things that are more twitching so not weekly equities, for example, and in Australia, under the top 300, so the smaller cap ones. Now that portfolio, it's an interesting effect on my psyche. I find the times that I've ignored that portfolio and I've just traded the way I should be trading with the other two portfolios. My trading actually isn't as good because I tinker with my trading plan by having a small amount of, I guess, more explosive to match that part of my personality money in that smaller portfolio that allows me to be true to myself. And I know that is controversial because we're supposed to be mechanical and automatic and take those signals and never change and follow our trading plan. I love that idea. I just had trouble implementing it. What are your thoughts on that, Brian?

Well, actually, that's a cool situation you bring up because one question I get fairly regularly is, you know, hey, Brian, you know, I want to be a discretionary trader because, you know, I'm a, I'm an intuitive person and that's where they feel comfortable. But, you know, they're having trouble with it. They say, you know, should I go ahead and do that or should I be a mechanical trader? And generally what I, what I'll say to them is, well, until you establish some success being a mechanical trader and get that wiring going in your head, discretionary trading can be a dicey game because you haven't, you haven't really wired in the, all the subconscious processing that goes with looking at the charts and, and you haven't done it successfully. But if once you've traded for, say like six months or a year successfully as a fairly mechanical trader, then you can step over into the more discretionary range because subconsciously you're going to process things properly and you have that, that kind of underlying wiring and foundation in your brain so that you can do the discretionary trading more effectively. And I found that to be pretty good advice. And well, and as far as trading to, you know, certain, certain numbers and stuff like that, it's hilarious because I've got this one friend of mine, we've known each other for years, and he trades a pretty decent sized account. And it's hilarious because he ran into the exact same thing. Even after working together for years, we just, there was one thing we could never get it past was this one level. Just couldn't get him past it. And so the final solution for was it's like, okay, he's going to trade this one small account. I have like 20 trade copiers, right? Because it's like if I'm looking at $200, I'm okay. But if I'm trading it and it says 2,000 or 20,000, I just. That messes with me. And so I'll just stick with my account where it says $200. I know that, you know, I know that it's multiplied, but if I'm looking at $200, I could, I can do it. Otherwise, it's just messing.

Oh, there's so much to be said for that method. I love it. Keep scrappy and, and in the action. And then also as well, I found that it has meant that when your account grows to a certain size, unfortunately, what can happen is you can sit back and you can rest on your laurels and you can say, oh, well, I've got it made now. Now that actually does not help anybody. I think to stay in the action, to stay where you're a bit hungry and that's emotionally hungry. I think that that is such an important part of trading well and maintaining performance. You know, so many traders, I see their results. If they've kicked off really strongly, then often they'll drop back. In terms of their abilities, it almost sees. And it's not their ability actually. It's their progression in terms of their mindset. That's why I love what we do. Our podcasts try to deal with this. We can't maintain this ourselves in isolation. We do need other people around us. We force feeding us that information to stay pure.

Oh, yeah, yeah, indeed. Well, and, well, the other thing, and I'm sure you're well aware of this and you remind people of it on a regular basis, trading is a performance activity. It's not just a job. It's a perfect. It's like a performance sport. And so, yeah, if you want to maintain that level of performance, you have to approach it that way. You can't just rest on your laurels and say, I'm going to coast. I mean, that's, that's how you wind up being an athlete. Like, you know, Bo Jackson, who was in, you know, like this, like, you know, should have been a superstar. He was like an all star in two different professional sports, but never really went anywhere. He had the potential to become a legend. He would rest on his laurels once he made the, like the, the All Star game in each of his sports. And it was a shame because when I remember when he came out of college, it's like, oh my God, this guy is just amazing. He's. He's just gonna be like the Michael Jordan of everything. And he never got even close because he would, he would, you know. Yeah, like I said, he'd hit that certain point and then he would just kind of rest on his laurels and. Well, even worse, to make it even worse, his ailment of choice for, for taking time off during the season was hemorrhoids.

Wow. There's so many things that just popped to mind there.

You know, it's like, yeah, he's not going to play this week because he's fighting hemorrhoids. It's like, oh my God.

Pick something, love. So let's use that as an examp and perhaps do a bit of an armchair reconstruction about how we could help this athlete. If we look at habit in terms of a broad perspective. Forming habits is one aspect that initiation aspect, but there's also the maintenance aspect of habits. Now, some people are natural finishers, they love to finish projects. They tick every box and they feel like, yay, I've done it. And they get a big endorphin rush. But there's some people that are not natural finishers. So I'm guessing with this athlete that that athlete was very good at the initiation phase. But that maintenance phase is where some additional support should have been provided by that person's coaches. I mean, this is really a high level coaching aspect. There are so many ways to initiate good behaviours. One of them is fresh start psychology. And we can start that right today if you like. Have you heard of that, Brian?

Sounds familiar.

Yeah, yeah. What it is is it is saying like a New Year's resolution as of this particular event, then I will start. Now, it is very common for us to be able to say a New Year's resolution or at the start of the month or when my baby's born or when I get married or when I have children. All of these aspects are fresh starts. And that fresh start can be harnessed even by walking through a doorway. Now, they've shown with dementia. Just roll with me with this. They've shown with dementia and unfortunately I relate with this sometimes is that. Have you ever walked into a room and you go, what am I here for? I know I was coming to this room, but I can't quite remember why. Oh, gosh. So unfortunately for us, what that has done to our mind is that that doorway acts as a fresh start and then everything behind the doorway is erased. See how we can harness this for Trading. When I walk through that doorway there, I'm going to stop whinging about my losses and I'm going to move on with my life. When I walk through that doorway, I will have this as my new attitude. Now that fresh start is a brilliant met. Particularly if you're stalling with the achievement of a goal. You pick a landmark, you use that landmark, you imagine a before and an after shot like they do in those awful weight loss type of photos where they show the before and the after. You know why they use that? It is because it is awesomely effective for behavioural change in others and it can be effective for behavioural changes in yourself. So pick a date or a doorway or an event not too far into the future and say you're allowed to whinge as long as you like up until that event. And then after that event, you will shut the heck up.

Wow. Yeah, that's pretty cool. I could see how that would be effective. I used to do that when I was growing up. We tended to move around quite a bit. My dad was climbing the corporate ladder and so we moved, seemed like every other year. And after a while, at first it was, it was kind of a drag. But after, but after a while it was kind of cool because it's like if there was something that was going on in my life that I didn't like, was like cool, I could, I got a fresh start. When I move, I can be whoever I want to be and people will, will know me as that. And so, yeah, I can see what you're talking about with, with that as, as a tool for affecting change. That's cool.

Yeah. And you can implement it right now. You know, I'm sure as we've been talking that as a listener of these podcasts, you're going to be thinking of something that you need to change. So this is something that is a really great try this at home tip. You can do it as soon as you like and it can be done again and again. And probably the other aspect of maintaining good behavior and maintaining happiness that I'd like to mention is about visualizing your future self now. Sure. It is interesting because there have been a lot of studies saying that people change. Now roll with me on this one because often when you look into your own past, you can see that you're not quite the same person that you were 10 years ago. You have changed, you've altered your views, you've altered your beliefs and you've grown in some ways and in some ways you haven't Grown. So there is definitely a difference between the Brian today and the Brian 10 years ago. The difficulty for humans is we have trouble using that same logic, thinking ten years in advance. So what we think is we think the person we are now will be the Same person in 10 years time. How can we harness this? There is a brilliant study by Fidelity and you can get apps to do this. I did it. It was quite simple. Scary. You can age yourself up. You can say what do I look like 10 years in the future, 15 years in the future, 20 years in the future? What will I look like now? I make a pretty cute little old woman actually. And I don't mind that look of myself. So it's not something that was awfully repellent. But if you imagine that person and you've got a visual representation of you older, that apparently, and this is according to the research, allows us to apply the lessons that we want today with greater clarity and greater effectiveness. So you picture that person that is slightly older than you. You imagine exactly what that person is, who they are at their core, how they live, how they trade, what type of implements do they use, what tools do they use to get the result that their life has led to? And you work backward now if you've got that visual representation. And really, I mean it is a little confronting because we don't like the thought of ourselves getting older. But once you can see yourself, those future self thoughts can actually embed themselves in your current behavior to a greater extent.

Wow, that's really cool. That's very cool. Well, kind of right along with that. Because one thing, you know, of course, as we get on and on with life, you know, regrets are something that happen and, and then develop. So one thing I've noticed, you know, especially like with trading, a lot of people are really hard on themselves with their trading and some of the mistakes they've made and they look back on and for a lot of traders on a daily basis they're beating themselves up. How do you see the role of forgiveness and forgiving yourself? For traders?

Yeah, this is a good one to combat because often I think the popular idea is that we instantly forgive ourselves. We say it's okay, I'll do better next time and it's fine. We have a hot bath or a hot toddy as whatever our vice happens to be and we move ahead with life. Now I have to say I, I'm not all for that method immediately. I have found it's much better if we kick ourselves first. Now as traders we have to be hard on ourselves. Nobody else is going to be breathing down our neck unless we're trading somebody else's portfolio and they're the manager in that situation, usually we are looking after our own money and we have to make sure that we are looking after our own own continuous professional development. Now, I have seen traders repeat the same habit again and again and again and not learn the lesson required from that particular downfall. I've got a trader. I'll give you an example. She's a great trader, but she gets bored. So then she changes markets. And every time she changes markets, we know when we start a particular market, start a particular trading strategy, 99% of the time we'll take a dip in our equity before it increases. So just as it increases, she switches to a new trading instrument or a new market. So she never gets traction. Yes. So where after traction is traded, I suggest if you make a mistake and you're aware of that mistake, kick yourself first, say, I did the wrong thing. Oh my gosh. Even if you call yourself names, get out of that name calling and think about the action that you can take next time. So in the future, how will you behave so that you don't repeat this mistake again and then only at that stage? Forgive yourself. Forgive yourself. Now, one of the things that I think is a really good way to handle this is I did the best that I could with the resources I had available at the time. Now, just speaking from a personal perspective, I got to say that to my father on his deathbed. I said, in a lot of ways, you were a very tormented man. But as a father, I think that you did the best that you could with the resources you had available. I wasn't saying that he was a great father because both he and I would have known that would not have been accurate. But I gave him that forgiveness. And we had a moment. We had a moment. Brian and I have hung on to that moment and it has allowed me to soothe myself. I said what I needed to say. I didn't lie and I didn't exaggerate that it was a rosy future for me with my father issue. At that stage, I actually said what was authentically true. And I think we deserve to ask ourselves those same authentic questions and to use it as a launching pad. So in the future, with more resources, with more understanding, after listening to your show and my show, with those tools available, we can do different in the future and we can achieve more.

Yeah, that's very cool. And you actually caught me by surprise a little bit with the with the self forgiveness. I expected you to go toward the softer side and not give yourself tough love before.

Yeah, look, I think that's because it's everywhere, everywhere that we look. These Facebook posts, these affirmations, these lovely little posters that they put out with nice little aphorisms on it. I think that the general way that people think is that they have to be gentle with themselves. The best traders are not gentle with themselves. They live, they learn the lesson and they alter their behaviour. And unless you can actually say introspectively that you've made a mistake, you're not going to alter your behaviour because you have taken that easy road. Your subconscious says hey that's fine, it all worked out okay in the end. Good for you buddy, keep going. That won't actually help us as well traders in the long run.

Yeah, well you brought up some good stuff on this, this conversation and I really like, especially like the habits and because you've mentioned that several times along the way, that really is key. But that, I mean that's also a reflection of attitude though. The attitude that you bring to the whole activity. What are, what are a couple other things or even if it's just one that traders could do additionally to help maintain that perform, you know, that high performance over long term.

I've got one but oh my gosh, I don't think everyone's going to enjoy this. There'll be a certain subsection that will. But I can guarantee if you do this, this will make a huge difference to the way you perceive your life, not just trading. Are you ready for it? I have interviewed quite a few professionals on dopamine lately. Now dopamine is that feel good neurotransmitter that gets released in your brain. And it is also interestingly the thing that creates desire. Now if you take out of a little rat, do brain surgery on a tiny little rat and you take out their dopamine ability to send dopamine and to receive dopamine, that little rat lives a happy enough life. It just forgets to feed if it gets to drink because it has no desire that it was willing to act on to drive it into that life saving activity of eating and drinking. So what we've done unfortunately in the current society is we have chased pleasure to such an extent that we have forgotten that the pendulum swings also towards pain. We have become pain avoiders. We have focused so much on avoiding pain and maintaining and seeking pleasure that our, our dopamine reception has become stuffed up. We need higher and higher levels of excitement we need to go skydiving, whereas our grandparents might have just needed to go for a walk around the block to have the same level of dopamine and pleasure released. So how do we get that pendulum that's out of whack to have that full range so that we can experience pleasure to a greater degree? What we do is we go on a dopamine fast. This is where we deny ourselves those wonderful, pleasurable things. Like, for me, I started denying myself cashew nuts. I know it's a little thing. I love cashew nuts. I was eating cashew nuts every day. So I gave myself a cashew nut fast for a month and then rejoined the cashew nut community and just went, oh, my God, these are amazing. It was just not something I'll ever take for granted again. So find little ways that you can create displeasure, create pain in your life. Create something that isn't pleasure seeking, that is actually pain seeking. So that ability to encourage pain into your life will actually result in greater levels of pleasure later. And I. I would like to hear, Brian, what immediately springs to mind when I am talking about my cashew nut addiction? What immediately could you deny yourself in terms of pleasure that would perhaps allow you to experience a bit of pain?

Oh, well, as far as the whole dopamine addiction. Oh, yeah. I mean, everybody's experienced. In today's modern age, if you have a cell phone or you've been on a computer, you've experienced dopamine addiction because, oh, yeah, the tech giants have been really good at dialing it in and putting everybody in that state where, yeah, you're just constantly in a dopamine craving. So for me, silly as it sounds, and I don't do it for the purposes that you're talking about, I did it just because I had to. Was like, staying off of Facebook because I found out, yeah, if I got on Facebook and I started scrolling through, you know, I wasn't there for a very specific purpose. Right. Get on and get off. I just was there casually. It's like I look up and two hours have gone by, and it's like I've been in this stupid trance almost like on a. And after a while, it's like, yeah, I just realized I just have to stay off because otherwise it just totally. It totally hooks me in the head. And so, yeah, whenever I run across something like that, I went through a speller. YouTube Shorts was the same thing. And so, yeah, as far as the dopamine addiction, yeah, today's. In today's world, that's A very real thing. And it is, you know, unhook yourself from that and just get back to, you know, like you said, you know, just not where you're not taking it for granted anymore. It's like, yeah, that's huge.

So, yeah, I think every trader needs to consider how they're behaving in terms of dopamine. I found with a lot of the traders that I've talked to, they followed their trading plan to begin with and they felt good about that, so they repeated that behaviour, but then that dissolved over time. They stopped looking at their trading plan because they thought they've got this now, that dopamine needs to be re established. That desire to follow a trading plan so that you can actually trade with precision and by investigating where you can deprive yourself of pleasure in other areas of your life, that will also have an impact on your own trading behavior.

Very cool. Very cool indeed. Now, as expected, I know we were like way over the anticipated time. I would love to continue this conversation. There's all kinds of topics we could cover as far as changing subjects here just a little bit and then I want to take it a very specific direction. Since we are on the Consistent Profits podcast, what do you see as one of the biggest obstacles to traders being able to achieve and maintain consistent profits?

Boredom. I think people get sick of it. It's a grind, it's a drudge. We have to continually reinforce that this is where I want to be, this is what I want to do, this is who I want to be in the future. Because that grudge, that grind, I should say, not the grudge, the grind can wear you down. So I would love to help people with that by giving you some little bit of a dopamine kick. If you are a listener of Brian's podcast and you'd like to try my podcast as well, the two work beautifully together. Come and Visit me at talkingtrading.com au and subscribe to my podcast podcast. Because really, Brian has been on my show many times in the past as well. So you could probably even start by searching up his name and seeing his past episodes. Come to Talking Trading and visit me there. How about you, Brian, for my listeners, tell people how they can find you.

Well, my site is Insideout Trading.com and that's where I host my podcast. I'm also on YouTube at the Trader Brian, so. And actually it's hilarious that you did that because that's where I was going to go next is. Okay, how can people find. Yeah, you got a great podcast And I mean, I'd love catching up with your podcast. A lot of times you're interviewing other people. Sometimes you do solo podcasts where you just kind of sharing your thoughts on things, which I totally love because you have great perspectives in either one, either setting. So it's very cool. So yeah, definitely for, for the listeners today. Definitely check out, you know, Talking Trading. Great podcast. You will enjoy it. Good insights, all different aspects of trading. I mean Louise is, she's really solid on the trading psychology, but she also, it's pretty sharp as a technical trader and handling the business side of things. So yeah, very worthwhile resource and enjoyable as you, as you've had a good sample here today. So. Yeah, and, and well, my main thing is like Louise has touched on a few times. You want to take action though, don't be complacent and just take things for granted and just let whatever continue. Main thing is if you've enjoyed what you've, you know, what you've heard today, if you like what you've heard, you know, yeah, do take action. Do go over and check out her podcast, you know, the Trading Game, her site, trading tradinggame.com Excellent resource there if you want to get onto that training. I know it's excellent, been around for a long time, very well established, very well refined program and it's a repeat for free, which is hard to beat. But also, yeah, the trading, Talking Trading podcast, Excellent, excellent resource. So don't just sit there and you know, listen to this and go, oh yeah, that was cool. And then, you know, forget about it and it's gone from, you know, your life. It's like if it resonated with you. Yeah, act on it, check it out, you know, go, go hook up with Louise and you'll be glad that you did so well. Any, any final words of wisdom for our listeners today.

Louise, recognize the incredible resource that is in front of you. Brian, thank you so much for having me on your show and thanks for coming back onto my show as well. You said maybe a year ago, two years ago, you got me out of a bind. I needed two interviews, jam packed fast, fast, fast. And you were there for me. So thank you so much, my friend. We'll be talking to you next week on the Talking Trading Show. And yours is a weekly show as well, isn't it?

Yes, it is. Yes.

So join us next week. Well, me on Talking Trading and Brian on Inside Out. Trading.com Excellent.

Yes, indeed. Louise, thanks again for doing this and everybody who's listening, I applaud you for, you know, taking the time to attend the podcast and, you know, pursue the development and growth and become a better trader. And we'll see everybody on the next episode of the Consistent Profits podcast. Talk to you soon. Cheers, thank you for joining us today on the Consistent Profits podcast, brought to you by Inside Out Trading. Make sure to swing by Inside Out Trading and pick up your copy of the proven formula for consistent monthly Profits. If you enjoyed the show, make sure to subscribe on your favorite channel and we'll see you on the next episode. Cheers.