A trader explains why fear and survival instinct sabotage your decisions under uncertainty, and how emotional intelligence and mindfulness can rewire your mind to trade with discipline and courage instead of panic.
Trading is a very different animal than what it appears to be initially. When you first look at it, you go, hey, I've got this. I know how to. I know how to build the knowledge base. And then I know how to be able to say, I'm not going to win every time, but I'm going to have high probability trades and everything's fine until you start adding risk to the vulnerability of probability. Then everything goes just wow. And ultimately what we discover is this, is that what we thought was there. We have to really rethink. We have to rethink the mind that we brought to trading, because what we realized, it's not working. And prove it to yourself. The trading account is the only thing that really matters in trading. And you look at it and go, you know something? I have a winning attitude, but at the same time, I bring that winning attitude to trading and it's not working. At some moment you go, what's wrong? Ultimately, the mind that you brought to trading is built basically for instinctual survival. And unfortunately, the moment that you start engaging uncertainty, you trigger those instincts, those survival instincts. And suddenly, literally, the vulnerability triggers to confusion. The confusion figures to, oh my gosh, vulnerability. And vulnerability trips, fight, flight. And that's where most traitors stay. They try harder, they try being more persistent, they get a more positive attitude, but it fails them still. And they finally come to the moment going, what's the problem? What's wrong with me? The truth is, is that the answer is within you. You know, all the talent you need is living within you. The difference is that you have to learn how to tap into that talent pool and then develop different parts of yourself rather than the ones that develop first that you're bringing now to trading mind. What we want to do is create a different mind based on different emotional responses to uncertainty. Okay, that's powerful. Listen to that. You want to create a different mind based on different emotional responses to uncertainty. That's what we're looking for, okay? And then to do that, we're going to have to say, you know something, we have to develop the self. We have to develop it differently than we have before. And ultimately, it's kind of like an acorn. It's got all the talent. It needs to grow into a big towering oak like these trees. But ultimately what you have to do is you have to say, I have to nurture it. I have to bring those things forward and, and I have to start living from those that can be done. And it's actually taught by us as a process. It Starts with a different understanding of emotions, emotional intelligence, and what meaning you bring to the moment of trading. Then what happens is you come to a moment where you go, you know, ultimately what I have to do is the very first thing is I have to be able to regulate the emotional response. I have to uncertainty. That is what's missing with most people. They don't know how to regulate the emotion. And if you don't regulate the emotion, you're never going to make it to the mind where all the neat stuff is. So when you regulate the emotion, the next thing that you're doing is you develop mindfulness. You develop an observer of the self. You literally develop the eyes that can see, the ears that can hear. Okay, that little kernel of acorn. You're listening to it, and you develop those eyes that can see differently, you develop the ears that can hear differently. And you start going, you know something? I can reorganize the mind that I bring to the management of uncertainty. Answer is, yes, you can. Evolution gave you default programming. That's the one that gave you literally the experience of uncertainty, to confusion, to vulnerability, to fight flight. But that's just programming. That's one set of programming that lives within you. Your job is to redevelop the gift that you've been given. You have to go back to the source, though. You have to go back into the source and say, you know something, I can go in. I can learn to redo the emotions that respond to uncertainty instead of fear, instead of, like, judgment living within you at this time. What you can do is you can develop the capacity.
To bring a disciplined, impartial mind, a patient mind, to engage the uncertainty with. That's the wonder of mindfulness. With mindfulness, you begin to be able to observe the workings of the mind. You begin to see it as a committee that has various forces working in it, and that you've been dominated by something called the inner critic. That's judgment and criticism and temptation and your fear and your need to prove that you're something ultimately you begin to realize. Well, that's one way to engage uncertainty. But there are other things, there are other talents within that mind that you can start observing, looking for and pulling forward. Discipline of a ruler, the courage of a warrior, the self, soothing of a self, compassion, passionate person, and the impartiality of a self. Ultimately, you learn to pull those forward into working mind. That is what you engage the uncertainty with. You don't have freedom from emotion. What you have is freedom of emotion and being able to build the emotions that build the mind, that engage the uncertainty. That's the power, friends. Come and learn. It's all there. It's living within you. It sits like an acorn, waiting to spring out and grow. But develop the eyes. Develop the eyes to see that potential and to grow it. Come and learn.
