Cracking the Secret Code of a Disciplined Trading Mind

How do you crack the secret code to a disciplined trading mind? Note every trader has been in this situation. They're sitting, they're waiting, they've got it, they have a plan, they're waiting for the opportunity. The opportunity starts coming and all of a sudden, out of nowhere, something just happened. They didn't even necessarily notice it. And before, before they do notice it, the smoke is just beginning to clear. But yet again, you are in the process of placing capital at risk with the thought of having, wow, this is a very good looking trade. It may not happen my way, but man, this is opportunity. Then when push comes to shove, when the risk is real, suddenly the brain just goes tilt. And before you know it, the trade's gone. You're sitting there frustrated. Now you're set, now you set yourself up for like, oh, well, I've got to get in this trade next time. And yet the moment has passed, the moment where.

You really needed to be present, you really needed to have your best trading mind there. And it just disappeared. It could be at entry. You know, what happens is at entry, what's really happening is you are in fact putting capital at risk. And a lot of traders find themselves unconsciously sitting there wanting more confirmation, more confirmation. And it passes. The trade opportunity passes. And what if they were to notice?

There's a small sigh of relief.

The emotional brain and instinctual survival skills has kicked in and it stopped you from getting in the trade. Because of that emotional brain views, it is that if you didn't get in the trade, you're not risking, it won. Why? Why is that so important? Because ultimately to the emotional brain, caveman brain, not getting in the trade does not allow you to risk capital, to risk loss and to it.

Okay, this isn't about just risking some capital. Your caveman brain knows nothing about capital, about money. But what your caveman brain does know is about the power to survive. And it is mandated.

For at least 6 to 8 million years for you to be able to say, you know something, I'm going to avoid that risk because it could cause bodily harm. Because that brain does not.

Going in and taking a monetary loss. It doesn't know about money. What it knows about is biological threat and it avoided it. You never saw that because you never knew that. The emotional brain acts like that and it's making 95% of the decisions that you make while trading.

At the same time, you may not be the one who has problems with entry. Maybe you have problems when it actually gets profitable. Maybe you get there and go, oh God, it can take this away from me. I better take it now. And what you're getting, you're seeing ancient survival phenomenon kicking in and taking the small money before it can be taken away from. You understand how important that was to our ancestors. And yet here it is. But the brain itself is pretty programmed to control outcome. It had to. It's a survival skill to the point where it developed the illusion of control. And that illusion of control convinced them that they had control over winning and losing. The problem was that was an illusion. And unfortunately, trading, unlike real life, will just put it right back in your face saying, no, you do not have control. You do not have control over winning or losing.

And all of a sudden, when that happens, the brain feels attacked. It no longer can ensure victory. It wants to win because it feeds the clan and gains status. Okay, that's a big deal. If it loses, oh, my God. To it, what happens? Have you ever seen how fanatical you get when that thing's coming against you and it's coming to close to your stop? And you want to change that sop. You want to give it some room. You don't want to do that.

To it. You're being attacked by a savior tiger. Yeah. And that Savage two tiger is on you. And you're fighting for your life. That's why revenge, trading, even over trading, is so powerful. That's half the story. That you come with a brain that is not built to do what you're asking for, then you keep pushing it and pushing it and pushing it, and it fights back, it pushes back, it tilts you. You're going to have to learn to manage that and bring a very different brain. But it's just not evolutionary psychology. Also, a lot of your brain, your ways, formed in your family of origin. Look, your brain as a social, mammalian, as a human being, it's remarkably unfinished at birth. It takes a year, nine months for your brain of an infant to catch up with the chimpanzee at birth. The thing is, during that period, it's not instincts that's programming how you're going to react to uncertainty. You are learning from experience about your ability to be able to manage uncertainty. And what most of us discover is that we come to believe that we can't manage uncertainty well. And we develop scarcity thinking we're afraid that what we have is going to be taken from us or we're a victim. Oh, my God. The trades are out to get me. The market's going to get me. Or we get worried about things. Oh, my God, you know, bad things can happen. I better sit around here. Those are great survival skills. The problem is that they also lock you in and put you in a position where you're not going to be able to consistently win. Or on the other side as you come to this moment of where, okay, you've won. Ah, great news, right? No. In winning, most traders make a vital mistake. They learn in their families to be competitors, to win. And in that, what happens? Winning, what that means is, wow, I've got it, I've got it. I matter. The problem in trading is you don't have control over outcome. You may win yet euphoric. And that's dangerous because it's going to produce a mind that's incapable of managing uncertainty. It think, oh yeah, I've got it, I've got it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, got it. And then you blow yourself up or you get into a situation like that where you're winning, maybe a good day, good week, good month, and all of a sudden you start thinking, this is too good to be true, it's going to turn on me. And you actually create the problem of sabotaging yourself. Right? Then we learn these in our families. We learn how to matter, we learn how to develop worth. Okay? And then what happens is understand this is all being driven by experience. You have a remarkably undeveloped brain that's learning all this stuff and it gets locked in.

And then you take that brain that's built by seven or eight years of age and you take that into trading and all of a sudden you find out that yeah, theoretically all this stuff is possible. But until you can manage the beliefs that you develop both from evolution and from the family of origin about your ability to win, about your mattering, about what losing is.

And deconstruct them and become a trader who is highly disciplined being able to manage the uncertainty of the life, okay.

Then you have to have the courage to face the inevitability of losing. In trading, you're going to lose a lot and you're going to have to become a keen, very good loser. And the problem is both your family and evolution taught you to hate losing because it was dead. And now you're going, oh, if I'm going to build a probability based mind for engaging uncertainty, I'm going to have to learn to lose very, very well. Yes, matter of fact, losing changes its meaning. Losing only means landing on the wrong side of probability. It could just be probability or it could be an error in your psychology or your methodology, which by the way can be repaired and Changed and worked with probability.

You never were in control. And yet we have this illusion of wanting to be controlled. Like an alpha, for instance. I'm going to win. I'm going to make things happen. That is a powerful illusion that trading is going to demonstrate to you that no, you don't have that control. You burn up a lot of capital yet again. These are coming both from our family of origin. The beliefs. They're instilled while the brain still, still forming and is just reacting to experience and learning about how it matters who you are, whether or not you are adequate, whether or not you have power to be all that. And what we discovered is we might be bravado and all that stuff and good in other areas. We take those same success skills and we bring them to trading and they blow up in our face. Friends, it's literally about rebuilding the mind that comes from that brain. Suddenly you're saying I need to change the core beliefs about who I am while facing uncertainty. Yeah.

And then what happens when you do that? When you build that mind, you have an edge. You're bringing a psychological edge to your method edge. And you're able to extract more capital out of the markets than you give back. Notice I didn't say winning and losing. What you control is not winning and losing outcome. You control the mind you bring to engage uncertainty. Friends, that can be taught. Most people don't want to do it because it's uncomfortable. You have to change very old familiar patterns that don't want to change. They resist it and you go, well, okay, I'll just say I don't. I probably don't need that. I just need a better system. I need a better teacher. I need a new gimmick. No, what you need is to build this for the game of trading.

Want to learn how? Watch more of these videos, read my articles, go to my website. Learn about how you fundamentally change the belief beliefs that you fell into.

And now are built into you, like, oh, this is the reality. And recognize their only assessment with a sense of certainty and that you can deconstruct them. You can build new ways of seeing uncertainty that give you the edge. Come and learn, friends. Come and lear.