A spoken monologue (YouTube video) by Rande Howell arguing that traders must rewire their default survival-driven brain to manage uncertainty, probability, and risk. Howell emphasizes changing core beliefs and neuroplasticity through applied mindfulness, emotional regulation, and intentional practice so the trader’s execution — reflected in the trading account — can consistently extract capital from markets.
You know, trading seems like a beautiful thing for a left brain, analytical person. You can think about and you can work in probabilities and you can almost like mathematically, with precision, look at things and see how things turn out. Then the problem happens is uncertainty, probability and risk all come together while you're sitting there with a brain that was designed for another time and another place and it's going nuts. While you need a mind that can work in probabilities and manage risk with uncertainty, your mind is someplace else. It's completely in a whirl that it's been designed to do. It wants to control certainty in the short term, it wants to control outcome, survival in the short term. That's the number one rule, self preservation. Yet boom, there you are, right in the throes, right in the throes of managing probability where there is high likelihood. You're not going to be right. The brain never is going to allow that. Okay? Unfortunately, no matter how much knowledge you have, this is one of the parts of trading that has to be relearned is literally the mind that you brought to trading is not going to produce the success you're looking for in trading.
It's simple, okay? But literally your mindset, how you go about working with uncertainty, probability and risk has to shift.
From the way nature designed it and probably your psychology made it happen also because your psychology will be either I'm going to win by I'm going to make things happen, I'm going to take action, I'm going to make things happen, I'm going to will into being, I got to be trading to be trading. Or on the other side you're going to say I'm not going to make a mistake, I'm going to be perfect and I'm not going to make a mistake. Both those are, one is attacking uncertainty, the other is avoiding uncertainty. You're not approaching uncertainty. So the key is if you want to really move to the next level, if you want to get past that glass ceiling that seems to happen with almost all traders. What you're ultimately going to have to do is, is you're literally going to have to change the mindset.
That you have currently into another mindset that can manage uncertainty and risk together. Remember, your brain is not designed to do that. It wants to ensure certainty of survival and that's the way the species is generated. Trading mine wants to stay long term with probability because you have an edge to the biology that doesn't mean anything, nothing. You're going to get hijacked. So ultimately what you're going to have to learn how to do, whether or not it's just by taking 10, 15, 20 years, or whether or not it's by learning how to change the neuroplasticity of the brain that you brought to trading, to the new brain that can produce success in trading. You're going to have to learn to be able to build a brain that is comfortable with uncertainty, comfortable with risk. I don't mean talking the talk, I mean actually watching your pulse, actually sitting there and recognizing that you can be calm. But more than that, you're going to have to take your survival.
Instincts and turn them off. You're going to have to turn the survival instincts off and you're going to have to turn on a different set of possibilities. You're going to have to teach. You're going to have to nurture a new being into place that accepts risk. It's just simply part of the deal. And not just accepts risks like oh yeah, well I'm going to win a few that can take, can take risk, can take loss, and can say, well you know something, there's nothing wrong with my methodology, there was nothing wrong with my psychology. The truth is I can never control outcome anyway. What I can control.
Is the process. What I can control is the mind that I'm bringing in to manage probability, to manage uncertainty, to manage risk. And you know that you're there by looking at your trading account, not by listening to your self talk. Know what you're looking to do is your trading account is going to tell you point blank exactly what kind of mind that you have brought into the management of probability. Okay? If you're stagnant or if you're losing money, it's telling you that the beliefs that you're bringing about, your ability to manage uncertainty cannot extract capital out of the markets. That's what it's telling you. You know, if you want to stay there, you need to understand that what the mind really does, it gets stuck in a familiar pattern. Kind of like the familiar that it already knows is a lot better than the risk of the unknown. Okay, Translated, the pain that you're currently experiencing is familiar to you, okay? It prefers that, your brain prefers that to learning something new, to learning how to manage uncertainty. That's the problem, friends. Until you grasp that your, your brain literally gets used to the suffering you're familiar with and will not tolerate risk beyond that, risk of the unknown, you have to turn that on its head to do that. There's a process. I teach it what you're going to learn how to do is. You're going to learn how to emotionally regulate emotion. You're going to learn how to be mindful. You're going to learn how to start seeing.
The conversations in your mind and depicting the historical internal dialogue. Then as you grow, you're going to learn how to build empowered parts of the self that you've pushed out and pull them into working awareness. And friends, that's the trick. Because ultimately what you're doing is you're not changing uncertainty. What you're changing is the mind that you're bringing that engages uncertainty. The risk will always be there. The challenges will be there. The uncertainty is going to be there. The ambiguity is going to be there. The difference is you're bringing a different mind to manage it. Not based on fear, but based on approach. That's what has to occur. And that's the process you use. The internal struggle goes on. And then you have to become intentional friends. This is a process I'm talking about. You learn the process. It's not a magic bullet.
You can't just read a book, even mine, and think you're going to get it. You have to change core beliefs about the self. You have to change the patterns. And at that particular level, that's where the regulation, that's where the mindfulness, that's where the applied mindfulness comes from. As you do that, you rebuild the mind. And one day you wake up and you realize, you know something, I'm as okay with winning as I am with losing. What I know that I can control is my execution, and that will pay dividends.
My trading account will show me that the beliefs I'm projecting now onto the markets allow me to extract capital from the markets. That's a professional trader.
