Building a Probability Based MInd from a Fear Based Brain

There is a big problem in the way. Use your mind, use your brain to trade. It's not what you think it is, okay? There's a lot of work that goes into being able to be a trader and having it, you know, getting the point where you really understand the markets from your. Your point of view, from a trained point of view, is there's a lot of work that goes into methodology, where you finally learn how to run this thing and find an edge. And that edge is going to give you the ability to extract more capital out of the markets than you put back in. That's successful trading. There's a big problem with that idea, though. The idea is the brain itself. Your brain, okay, is built to evaluate risk and safety in the environment, same as. Same as your mind, as you've trained your mind to do. The problem is this. Your brain is going to operate with a completely different set of assumptions than you as a thinking creature are. Okay? And I want to read something to you. This is from one of the eminent neuroscientists of our times. And here he is. And he's a researcher. He's not. He's not. He's an academian. Listen to this, okay? Listen to this. Here he goes. Our nervous system, that's your brain, function as a sensory by continually evaluating risk in the environment. Okay, now understand this is your brain doing it. Exactly what's it evaluating for? Okay? Through neural surveillance mechanisms, that's different physical aspects of our sensory input, our brain identifies features of risk or safety. Many of the features of risk and safety are not learned. This is what I want you to hear, friend. They're not learned, but rather are hardwired into our nervous system and reflect adaptive strategies associated with our phylogenic history. Wow. What does that mean? That means basically, we as Homo sapiens, taking us all the way back down from a time that we were not these human beings that we're looking at now. We're human beings. We're. We've got the stuff, but we have not evolved this neocortex, this thinking brain that thinks it's in control. Rather, what we are is that phylogenic business is our ancient ancestors who could not think, who did not think as we think. But at the same time, their brain, their emotional brain is out evaluating risk and safety in the environment in much the same way that you, as a modern trader, are evaluating risk and safety in the markets. Now, do you see where the confusion can happen here? Can you see where it's very easy for the ancient primitive brain, the One that was literally looking for risk and safety out there on the African savanna and finding a lot of mind. It was a dangerous place. Then reacting to it, basically with a brain built around fear of avoidance of danger. Okay, now take that and recognize you have brought that right back up with you every time you trade. This time though, you're trying to be this guy in control, this modern human being, and you're looking out in the environment, same eyes.

As the ancient had and you're going, okay, I'm seeing risk. Yeah. My whole job as a trader is risk management and safety. I need to be able to, you know, once I get into a trade, I need to really be able to make, make sure that I stay safe. I don't get into bad things, I do all that stuff. However, under stress, what do you think happens? That old ancient part of the brain takes over and suddenly we have a primitive brain from a primitive ancestor making decisions about our risk and that whole nine yards. Now.

This is where it gets interesting and where you really need to check into this, your emotional brain, when it experiences uncertainty, it's going to solve that problem.

Okay? It's going to solve it. And we call that a limbic learning. When it finally comes across a solution that works, it'll lock it in, literally synaptically, and it just absolutely starts flowing. You don't even have to think. Literally. Your brain interacts with the environment and that signal shows up. Say the trade goes against you and all of a sudden it boom. It reacts by bringing an emotion up into play. And suddenly the force of that emotion is out playing, taking over mind. And there you go. Now the trick is this. At one level before, our human ancestors thought like us. It stayed on the limbic level. It never had thoughts, it never had beliefs. It just was a solution about the avoidance, the attacking of threat. That's what he was doing. However, now it's changed. Somewhere along the miracle of evolution, we developed thinking. We became a thinking sentient being. And suddenly those limbic learnings that taught our organism how to be in relationship, a successful short term relationship with the environment begin to get encoded as beliefs. Suddenly there are powerful beliefs in play. When you are actually experiencing the stress of trading, the challenges of trading, the uncertainty of trading, and those are about your adequacy, about your mattering. I got a win, I got a win. To show them I really matter your worth. Do I really deserve to make easy money or powerlessness? Oh my God. I have no controls over the trading gods. And all of a sudden you begin to See that it's no longer just limbic learning, but it's psychological belief. We've literally gone from limbic learning to the development of beliefs in our psychology. And then what happens is you project that onto the markets. But this left brain, it starts making up narratives, stories, alibis.

About those beliefs that derived from those limbic learnings. Suddenly you start creating a tale of why I didn't get in the trade. More, more confirmation. Just a little bit more confirmation. A little bit more confirmation. Notice that the logic is not there. The story is there and it seems logical. But now that story is serving fear.

Okay? Not probability, fear. This is the ancient brain talking. So we have a story. We end up creating the story about us being winners or losers. And we say, you know something, I've got to be a winner. I've got a control outcome. I've got to make it happen. That is going to be a dangerous type of mind story to bring into trading. In the same way, I don't want to be a loser. Well, at the same time, if you're going to be a trader, you need to become an incredibly good loser because you're going to be doing a lot of losing. It's kind of like a.300 baseball hitter. You know, that's a Hall of Fame guy. Yet if you take a look at it going, wait, he's only Getting base hits three out of 10 times. He's only 30% successful. That's a great success rate. So you start seeing traders and all of a sudden they have these ideas about not losing. And yet the idea of not losing sets them up to lose because they don't know how to lose.

How do you go about changing all this? Well, the first is to acknowledge it's there whether or not you like it or not. It's not going to go away. And the more you resist it, the more it persists. But what we teach, an empowered in our work, what we teach with like a traitor state of mind, is this. We teach basically a six prong program. It starts with emotional regulation. You really have to go in. You have to be able to manage the triggering of that emotion and being able to manage it so that it doesn't hit a peak level and then stick over and just contaminate mine. That's the first level. The second level is to produce a level of mindfulness that allows you to step back out of thought and to recognize that all you really are, this you you keep talking about is actually a particular potential that has organized into itself. And you didn't have anything to do with it. You can't kind of seem stuck with it. Into trading. You realize, oh my God, I can step back, my thoughts and I are not the same, my beliefs are not the same as me. And yet at the same time I need to learn how to reorganize them. The third thing is you have to turn toward your demons, your darkness and start realizing, wow, I need to turn toward what I fear. Yeah. And you discover there's an inner critic that judges and criticizes you. You discover that there is an orphan nature within you that's scared or it's trying to prove its worth. Dangerous in trading, that's the next step. The next step is that you start discovering that there are powerful elements living within the self that you do need to manage probability rather than the old stuff the primitive brain gave you. And those are discipline.

Courage.

Self soothing, impartiality. Those are emotional programs that are part of your genetic structure. That phylogenic stuff that Porges was talking about. Here though, you're learning how to pull them up, okay, in the face of stress and to act from them. That's emotional intelligence, friends. And that's what's missing mostly in trading. That's where emotional discipline comes. But that's not enough. You have to engage the internal struggle from this position of strength. That's the intentional mind. That's what we learn how to produce. The last thing is you have to stay vigilant. Often a lot of traitors believe that. Man, if I can just get past fear, man, I've got it made. Then they discover there's something beyond fear even more dangerous. Overconfidence. When you start winning and you start going look at me, I'm winning. No, what you've done is you've developed the ability to create a mind that can engage and work with uncertainty really well. It's not a permanent fixture and you have to stay vigilant because otherwise you'll fall back down. Friends, that's the way we do it. That's the problem that you've got to solve. That primitive brain that is going to solve the problems of risk and safety, but it's going to do it on enormously short term fix way that just doesn't lend well to probability mind at all. But the key is as you solve that problem and you begin to realize that I can transform the old brain that's built around fear and I can transform it into a probability based mind for trading. Come learn how come to our website. Begin to really look at the different free materials and other stuff in my book and then start really looking at the courses. Friends, there is a way to build that fear based brain into a probability based mind. Come learn now.