Breaking Through the Mental Obstacle that Holds Your Trading Potential Hostage

You know, if being and staying rational were easy, there would be a lot more successful traders today. But they're not. We're all taught that being rational is really important with trading. You know, if you keep that rational thinking there, you don't let emotions come in. Yet at the same time, there we are. The vast majority of traders can't do that. They keep talking the talk. They have a narrative of, you know, I can really do this, I can be rational. But yet when they get under pressure, when they're challenged with money at risk, they discover that things start going cuckoo. They go haywire.

So the key is it's not really so much about staying rational, okay? That's the big thing. It's really more about what's stopping you from producing a rational mind under pressure, okay? This, friends, is the mental block that most people, most traders live in day in and day out, and they never realize their potential because ultimately they truly, truly, truly have a block. They have a mental block about what it's going to take to produce the kind of mine meant for trading, needed for trading. They can't do it for various reasons. And it doesn't matter where you are on the scale of trading, whether or not you're a beginner having problems with pulling the trigger, or whether or not you're leaving too much money on the table. I mean, profitable, consistent, like profitable, but leaving too much money on the table or doing some really stupid things. Where you fall into impulse trading, the key is what you begin to recognize is that no matter how you deal the cards, that what we think of as rational really isn't rational at all.

This is interesting, isn't it? Ultimately rational, what we call rational is a state of mind that is not influenced by fear.

There's a beautiful saying, is that humans are not rational beings, they're rationalizing beings. And what you discover from neurobiology is this. Is that what you call reason? Rational thinking is actually simply the left brain producing an explanation and an alibi that supports whatever the right brain has already decided.

This is interesting. If you listen to it, you begin to realize, oh, there's really no such thing as rational thinking. Rational thinking, logical thinking is always influenced by the underlying emotion that you have about engaging uncertainty.

Add to that the meaning.

Of that emotion. Ultimately, it comes down to this. The belief you hold is what's going to trigger the emotion. And the belief that you hold is what we're interested in. What do you believe will really happen? Can you manage the uncertainty of the moment, really? And what I ask you to do is don't listen to the narrative in your mind talking about being a winner and not losing and stuff like that. What I ask you to do is to go beyond that because most likely that's a lie. That's what the brain does is it lies.

What happens is that when you look at your trading account it's telling you point blank what your belief systems are that you're projecting onto the markets. That's what it's doing. If you're extracting capital from the markets consistently, profitably, then what you have is you have a belief system, not the truth. An effective belief system that is able to extract capital out of markets and stay calm. If you have an ineffective belief system that you're projecting onto the markets, it's going to show you either just kind of like a stagnant profitability or that you're losing money. That's the key is what you're doing is you're not listening to the self talk of you going, I'm a winner, I'm a winner. I, I'm not a loser, I'm going to have a winner stream of mine. I'm going to work hard, I'm going to do that. That's meaningless in trading. What really amounts to is that you ultimately come to the conclusion in trading is that the effective traders find that they do not control outcome. Okay, Their predictions and all like that, you know, they're predictions, that's what they are and they're maybes. But often what most traders find out is no matter what they predict, things are different. Once you get into the trade, it's what happens there. Do you have to be right? If you do, you're going to make a really poor trader. Ultimately what we have here is we have the ability of saying, you know something. This talk going on in my mind is really reflection of the belief system that I bring to the performance of trading. I'm sitting there trying to win outcome which is impossible. And by doing that I really frustrate the fight flight response is that I keep pushing, keep pushing, keep pushing against something that I can't really win with predictability. Ultimately though, what you do control, what you do control. And listen to this, you control the mind that you bring to the process of trading. That's where winning or losing needs to be measured. Do you perform your rules? Are you able to maintain emotional sobriety during the midst of literally the process of your trading? It's not about the winning or losing. So ultimately let's take a look at this thing. Ultimately you Have a brain, you have emotion, you have mind, and you have beliefs. These all work together to create the trader that you are. And ultimately there's a whole system here. What does the brain really do? The brain is an adaptive organ. There's nothing like it in the world. We are unique in that sense. We have an ability to adapt that is far beyond other animals. My dog is going to stay a dog, he's going to dog around. But humans can adapt by design.

And this is the place where we need to look at that mental block. Because ultimately your brain has created an adaptation that allowed it to produce survival at one time, in one place, under certain circumstances, it created pattern. In order to be able to make sure that pattern was there to be helpful for the survival of you, the organism, the traitor. What it did is it created emotions. And what you discover is that emotions really are not feelings.

Feelings are one, one small component of an emotion. They just simply let you know they're there. The emotional feeling literally is the chemistry of the emotion in your body altering thought, okay? But it's not the emotion. It's just one tiny aspect of the emotion. The emotion itself is a biological action potential that allows you, the trader, the organism, to coordinate activity between the organism and the environment. That would be your trading, the markets, okay? And ultimately it's all about that coordination of actions. Emotions are about action. They're going to get you to do things. Unfortunately for you, the default programming of your emotions is for survival first, not long term benefit, which is necessary for trading. So ultimately, all this pattern making stuff that happens with the brain is going to create short term survival strategies, survival instincts. So what do you think is going to happen.

When you produce uncertainty? You're walking into uncertainty. And the brain's wired already. The moment it experiences uncertainty, it's going to experience vulnerability. In that vulnerability, it's going to experience confusion. That's the worst thing in the world for the brain. It will automatically hardwire, jump to fight, fight response at that moment. You see it all the time in trading. And you sit there and say, well, I'm a rational person, I'm a rational person. That very thing of thinking that you're a rational person is the mental obstacle that keeps you from seeing that you're not a rational person, you're a rationalizing person. And once you realize, okay, I know the default programming is set up so that the moment that I experience uncertainty with risk to the emotional brain, that uncertainty with risk means, oh, threat of biological, biological termination. Same with true tiger time, okay? It doesn't get that. It's trading. It's not in the jungle anymore. It will never get that. You have to retrain it. And you can't do that if you're sitting there saying, I'm a rational person, I'm a rational person. No, the truth is, as you're a rationalizing person and you have instinctual responses to uncertainty all the time, that's what has to be changed. Now. The moment that there is a trigger where the uncertainty triggers an emotion, triggers that biological action potential and all of a sudden there's a cascade of chemicals. That's the feeling state. And before you know it, you're taking action based on fight flight. You're, you're freezing on the mouse. You know, you're, you're sitting there. Fear of missing out, you're jumping in and out of things. You're in fight flight. What we're doing is that's the biological default setting. You're going to have to alter that because ultimately.

If the instincts, the survival instincts guide your trading and that's what guides most everybody, okay? And you know, you may be able to fool it for a while, but then it cascades back on you and you have good days, then you give everything back. It's that kind of thing. Ultimately, what we need to do, we need to learn how to change the entire conversation that you're having about winning and losing. Because I'm going to tell you, if you don't become a superb loser in trading, you're never going to be a winner. Never. So ultimately what we're doing is we're beginning to examine what is this about winning, what is it, what do I need to change about my winning attitude. We have to look about what winning proves to you. For most people, it proves their worth, it proves how much they matter, it proves their adequacy, it proves their power. And what happens is that, that winning is based on the notion of controlling outcome, okay? Which cannot be controlled in trading. So ultimately this whole conversation in your mind that's linked to emotions controlling environment.

Or responding from a fight flight response, okay, it has to be reprogrammed. You have to shift that survival instinct of survival in the moment, okay? No saber tooth tigers here to long term benefit where you're looking at probability and you recognize that I will lose, I will win. But the truth is I can't control either of those. I control the mind that I bring to trading. I control, I can learn to control the emotions that give rise to mind that you take to trading to perform default Setting is fight flight under threat, and that threat means capital at risk and uncertainty. So ultimately, you do not have freedom from emotions. You have freedom of emotion. You can train yourself.

To respond to uncertainty with a completely different set of emotions than you're currently doing, which gives rise to a different mind. You also have to change the belief structure, your sense of adequacy, your sense of mattering, your sense of worth, your sense of power tied to controlling outcome. Okay, you got to do that. Ultimately, when you look at a trade, if you win, you didn't really do anything that special. There's no reason to get excited or feel good. All you did was land on the right side of probability. That's probability thinking. If you lose, there's no reason to get dejected. You simply landed on the wrong side of probability that time. Okay, you did. You controlled what you could control. The mind that you brought to trading that mine is rooted in a different set of emotions than the fight, flight, survival response. It's rooted in disciplined patience and impartiality. Those are emotional programs that literally live in your brain as programs and are given voice in your mind. Okay, that's all these thoughts talking. Ultimately, your job is to manage the self, talk the narrative that's going on, and recognize, okay, I'm letting go of the narrative of winning that I have of controlling outcome. And I'm developing a narrative about being open to possibility, to being able to manage what I can manage, controlling what I can control my performance. When you do that, you discover you let go of the angst that leads to fight flight and all the disaster that happens in trading all the time. So ultimately, here we go. You're changing the narrative. How do you do that? The very first thing is you have to learn how to manage the emotion. I teach that by breath and by tension reduction literally in the process, while you're trading. And you'll discover that you've had little or no control over the biology of the emotion that's giving rise to mind. And you have to get that. But that's never enough. You have to develop mindfulness also of where you begin to recognize that my thoughts and I are not the same, my beliefs and I are not the same. And I, this thing called I, this, this investment I have in my self image is simply one organization of a potential self. And it's the one that developed before you could even think. Here, what we're saying is you need to redevelop this sense of I so that it becomes a disciplined, impartial, impatient mind that's the emotions behind the mind, okay? And that the truth is you give up control of outcome to be able to control yourself during performance.

That's the winner's edge. Now as you step back and you realize, oh, these are just potential organizations itself, this comes to the cool thing about humans that is so vastly different. We can become designers of the future self that we can be. We can become designers of the mind. We bring to the management uncertainty. How do you do it? You learn how to awaken different emotional programs. So you give rise to discipline, you give rise to courage. You give rise to calming, self soothing. You give rise to impartiality. And you no longer fear your fear. You turn toward your dragon and you master it. You don't conquer it, you master it. It becomes your teacher. It shows you where you need to learn. This is what trading is so good about. So ultimately, the challenges of trading, the challenges of managing uncertainty with risk, never change. What changes is the interpretation, the mind that you bring, the observer that you bring to those challenges. That's what changes. It's not a trick, it's not secret knowledge. What it is is you taking and redesigning your belief systems and learning how to pull forward certain emotional programs to build mine, to engage uncertainty. Friends, that can be taught. And if you really, truly decide to become a successful trader or move to another level in your trading, this is the job standing before you.

It's going to be there all the time. It's not going to go away. The difference is, do you accept that you have a mental block and you're going, I can see. I can learn to see the mental block. I can see how on my emotions and my conversation, my narrative about winning is blocking me from producing the mind that can win in trading. Different mind between, say, American football, where you're controlling outcome, controlling the willpower, and trading, where you control probability, you control the mind. You bring to probability. And you have to decide, do you want it? Okay, you decide, do I really want it? That's really the key is do you want it enough to confront yourself, to say, you know, I need to change. I need to get out of my comfort zone. I need to reorganize the mind that I bring to trading. That's the ticket. The mind that you brought to trading, no matter how great it was and how successful it was in another time, in another place and other circumstances, is based on winning and controlling outcome. The mind that you're looking for in trading is about probability and about recognizing. You control performance, not outcome. If you want to learn more, go to my website. Tremendous amounts of free material. Get the free ebook and really start exploring about what you can do to rebuild the mine. Redesign the mine to take the next step in your trading. Building the mine that can use that methodology. Use that platform with an edge. Have a good one.