Developing Self Control

How do you develop self control? First of all, most people, when they get into trading, they discover what used to be self control. How they could use self control in another world. Kind of the world out there outside of trading doesn't work inside of trading, where all of a sudden you think you're in control and all of a sudden tilt. How does that happen? How does it move so rapidly? To where? To your perception. You've got self control and then the next second, almost it's gone. Now, without self control, we're not going to have the patience, we're not going to have the ability to sit and wait. We're not going to be able to sit and calmly make decisions when things are fluctuating like crazy. So we know it's important. But first, in order to know how do you develop self control? Let's take a look at what do you think self control really is? Okay, is it like this? What I get is a lot of people going tough. I'm going to tough it out. I'm going to flex, I'm going to resist or something. I'm a big, huge tough guy. Look at me. I can tough it out or I'm going to leave my emotions at the door and I'm not going to touch them.

Emotions aren't really good in trading. All these are strategies that people use all the time, including stoic, where I'm just going to ignore it. I'm just going to be tough, mentally tough. All that blows up when things get real, when the money's real and the trade goes against you, or you're risking capital.

So let's start here. What do you think self control is? It's really an extension of emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is telling you something really important. It's telling you there is no freedom from emotion.

You're stuck with them. They're not an option. You're going to have to learn to deal with them and master them rather than push them aside, tough it out and stuff like that. But there is freedom of emotion. Here is when self control starts showing up as a possibility within the context of emotional intelligence. Because ultimately, in emotional intelligence, what you're really saying is, first an emotion, okay? It's not a thing, it's not a feeling, it's not psychological, it's biological. And the truth is an emotion erupts anytime that there is a deviation to a standard pattern. Now, what that may mean for you as a trader is when you're looking at your chart and there's a change in it.

The emotions there you don't have any say so about the emotion firing. However, you do have a say so about what emotion fires and in what degree. You can learn to master the use of that emotion. But then the deal is this. You're sitting there and you say, okay, I now realize that an emotion is going to happen. Anytime that there is a deviation to a standard sensorial pattern, that's a change, it's a drop, you know, it's coming close to your stop, or it's expanding and you're just looking at all the money before it gets there. But that's not all. An emotion.

Is also a biological action potential. And what its purpose is, is to coordinate activity between the organism that would be you as a trader and the environment that would be the markets. In the middle of it is your chart. Okay? So if you get it, oh, an emotion is rooted in biology. It's not rooted. It's not rooted in my psychology. No, it's not. And the truth is we carry with us from ancient times when our caveman ancestors had really big things to be afraid of, like big bears, big cats that were hunting them down for meals. So we come equipped with some survival instincts, okay, that come all the way from the time that we shared a common ancestor with chimpanzees. That's a long time ago. But at the same time, we've got the same brain. We have a lot more. We have a neocortex, but that emotional brain, that mammalian brain, the one that built group survival, the truth is, is we were very small creatures. And what we did is we made an assumption that there was a saber toothed cat behind every bush out there on the African savanna. Whether or not there was one or not. Actually only 1 in 10,000. But it was a survival trait that really worked. And it wired in to where it was instinct within us. We bring that mind into trading. We think that there's a booger man, there's a bad guy out there to get us back then there was. Right now what you're doing is you're saying, you know, I've got some money at risk, but that's not my being. Well, tell that to your caveman brain because ultimately it's wired to see, oh, that trade going against me, the saber tooth tiger coming to devour me, or when I see a woolly mammoth and there are eight of us and we're going to attack it, we get euphoric. You have to, because you would never attack something 30 times your size. So you're looking at that and going okay, where's the self control? The self control is when you recognize that emotions are inescapable. However, what you can do is you can become the designer of the emotions that show up.

To greet a challenging moment. Now, what that means for you is that you have enormous capacity. Instead of fear triggering automatically because the trade goes against you, you, you actually have a choice about, well, what emotional cocktail do I need to create the mind? Cause all thinking is emotional state dependent. I want you to hear that all thinking is emotional state dependent. So what you're doing is you're actually going to the point of going, okay, I know that there's a trigger there and I know it's triggering some ancient, ancient, ancient instincts at the same time. I know by using my breath, by using my observer, by using the incredible resources that live within you, I can redevelop the response I have to a challenging moment. Instead of it being fear based, it can be curious, it can be approach.

And particularly also not aggression. And what I want to do is I want you to grasp how deeply connected your biology is.

To your psychology, okay? Because ultimately all thinking is emotional state dependent. So you're looking at it and going, okay, now what am I demonstrating? And if you get that emotions are biological, you can see them all the time. One of the things I do, and this is actually a test I want you to do, I want you. The next time you trade, what I want you to do is film it on your smartphone and, and get ready to film it for 10, 15, 20 minutes. What I want you to do is to see yourself when that trade heats up one way or the other, I want you to notice yourself. I want you to notice the tension and the way you're breathing. Because the truth is, the tension you feel in your body when you kind of like go like that, that is emotional arousal. That means the emotion has already triggered, it's gaining a head of steam. And as long as you maintain that tension, and that tension will be in your eyes, it's going to be in your neck, it's going to be in your body, it's going to be in your fists. And it also looks like this. This is when it becomes fixation.

Have you ever been glued and just watch yourself like that? Yeah. Freeze. Now, the thing is, is you're looking at that and you're going, oh.

That'S learned and also instinctual. What you can do though is you can learn to say, you know something, I can catch the emotion before it becomes a raging bull. By noticing its signs, I can Notice the tension in my body, and it can be a signal that I have to start calming my nervous system down. Now, that's what emotion regulation does for you. All that breathing stuff I teach. But there's more. There is also the way you breathe. When you take a look at that fixation, the one that I was showing you, like that staring, crawling into the screen. What you're looking at is your attention span has just been focused, laser focused. And what you're also not doing is breathing.

You're holding your breath, or are you going to? What that is is fueling the emotion of fear or anger to erupt and take over the central nervous system. And when it does, understand, our ancient caveman ancestors had to react immediately, without thinking, to threats. And that's why we call it the autonomic nervous system. What happens is it fires. If we don't have a parasympathetic nervous system to cool it down, we go on a rampage. That's tilt. That's emotional hijacking. So now we're going. Okay, I can see right now that I'm entering this trade. I am already not breathing, or I'm. And I know that I'm fanning the flames of fight flight right then and there, what you're doing, you're saying, I need to breathe.

Now, if you're looking at that air in 1, 2, 3, 4, whole release, 1, 2, 3, 4. And then you release the tension in your body. You let it drain, drain, drain, until you're loose and limp, loose and limp like a sleeping baby. What I want you to notice as you've been listening to me, from seeing the word breathe flash in the mind. Air into belly, expand to chest, hold, and then release. And as you release that breath, not only does the air go out of you, but the tension in the body drains, drains, drains, until you're loose and limp. Loose and limp like a sleeping baby. Now, notice that state of mind compared to the one that you're all cranked up. So what you've done is you have interrupted the arousal of that emotion and gaining control of it, you become master of what emotional program is going to show up rather than one that is instinctual. Instincts are pretty simple. Fear, anger, boom. Fight, flight. We want approach, we want curiosity, we want emotional control. Because ultimately, remember this is that all thinking is emotional state dependent. And right here in this little demonstration, what I've shown you is just with a little practice and a little observation, you have to become observer of your body to tell you what the emotion's up to because when you see that, that tenseness you're seeing emotional arousal you're in the process of losing control right then and there. Your job is to reclaim it from releasing the tension.

Okay Stress inoculation and you're learning to breathe diaphragmatically and you're calming down. That's where the self control is friends.

At the moment of calming down you can be the one who's emotionally intelligent again and choosing what emotional programs are going to create the mind that engages that challenging moment self control. If you want to learn more, watch more videos come to the website and start really looking at it going okay Randy's talking about the very front end of his program emotional regulation and the beginnings of mindfulness.

When we do that we also get to powerfully important parts of yourself that simply have not been developed that can create the mind that engages probability completely different friends come and learn and good luck everybody it's been great. Bye bye.

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