Mastering Fear and Aggression in the Moment of Uncertainty

Traders step into a world that they have no understanding of when they begin trading. Even experienced traders try and follow system, keep trying to force a particular worldview onto the markets. And what they discover is something is missing, something terribly is missing. No matter how hard they try, what they discover is they get to the moment of where they have capital at risk, and suddenly everything flies out. Suddenly the mind that was so straight, so rational just simply no longer works. And they go, what's wrong? What's wrong? And they look to the system, they try harder, they try more teachers, they work and they work, they work harder. They try that winning formula, and what they discover is that winning formula doesn't work. There's something magical that happens. And that magic that happens is it's literally about.

Your brain is designed for really a world that no longer exists. It works for a world where there was danger everywhere, where uncertainty was dangerous. Uncertainty was the whole thing about death. There were sabert toothed cats around, there were big bears. We needed to react very quickly, and we did. We learned to do that. We adapted. The problem is that it was very successful and it got wired in. We call that the survival brain, caveman brain. We also call it the right brain, the emotional brain. What we've done in trading is we promote and we think about that left brain, that logic, that reason, and we want that to work so bad, and yet we don't think, you know, what, what is really trading all about. We develop that left brain, our logic, our reason. What we don't do is we don't take this ancient primitive emotional brain that was designed for hundreds of thousands of years ago, caveman brain, and we do not develop it for the needs of trading.

They're huge. Understand, you have a brain developed for survival in another time, in another place. It will set up pattern, and when it finds matches to that in the environment, it automatically fires before thought.

And that's what we bring into trading. And it works in nanoseconds. More than that, it's just not the nanoseconds. It's highly reactive, it's very fast, and it knocks out the ability to think rationally. And yet all the time, all the energy, all the money we've invested goes in the development of that left brain. Yet if you were to take a look at the left brain and the right brain sitting side by side, you'd find out something. They're of equal size. There's even this communications conduit called the corpus callosum that integrates the ability of the brain of both spheres to be able to work together. What we've done, we have really muscled up the left brain. And what we've done is we've left the right brain, emotions, back in caveman time, back with the saber toothed cats. Then.

We take that brain and we force it.

Into a probability based set. Understand, your brain was so built against probability, it wanted certainty, it wanted control over outcome, it wanted to be right. And yet you put it into a situation.

Where no matter how hard you try, no matter how what you do, all right, you can still be wrong. You turn that, you turn that emotional brain, you produce the uncertainty. And friends, this is what I want you to hear. The moment that that brain of yours, that right brain of yours experiences uncertainty, it becomes vulnerable. It's going, oh, my God, there's a dangerous world around me. I have to react now. And evolution designed, hardwired a link between the sensation of vulnerability to fight flight. So when you're saying, well, yeah, I have fear of losing, I have a hard time getting into setups. You know, I have a hard time, you know, when it gets profitable, I jump out. You know, I have a hard time. When it starts going against me, I go bananas. Well, what you're feeling is that ancient brain of yours that has not been trained for the times, it's reacting to uncertainty, certainty, meaning danger, vulnerability to fight flight. There's your fear of losing, there's your hesitation, there's your just absolutely losing your stuff. There's your focus on I've got to be right, I'm going to make this thing happen. And revenge, trading and over trading. That's where all that occurs, friends, right there. And yet.

That brain, that emotional brain.

Is plastic, is malleable, just like the rest of the brain. It can be developed, it can be reorganized and developed so that it moves from survival in the short term.

To probability mind, that can handle that. The thing, though, that's not its natural place. You're going to have to develop that. And there's really no choice if you want to become a consistently profitable trader. It's just the way it is. The real question is we can stay mindless and we can continue doing the same thing. Or you can listen to these words and say, oh my God, I've been using my right brain and I've been trying to force it into a hole. I've been trying to push it away and pretending that it doesn't exist, when in fact, my right brain and my left brain are partners.

And the deal is to learn to teach them to be in Partnership with one another for probability, not for survival, for probability. Your right brain has to be developed to move away from survival instinct into the probability land. That consistent profitability works. And here you are, friends, it can be done. We actually have a methodology, a way of teaching how to interrupt the old process and to retrain. Because the truth.

What will always happen, is that when you hit uncertainty, and there's a lot of it in trading, particularly when you add capital at risk in there, you are going to produce the brain on vulnerability.

But the magic moment, at that moment of vulnerability, what do you do? What do you do? Instead of the old wiring, the old primitive wiring.

To fight flight, aggression or fear, you can retrain it to say.

That encounter with uncertainty is going to produce vulnerability. But what emotions show up to create the mind that engages that uncertainty?

Your brain can be trained.

Your right brain in particular can be trained to encounter that uncertainty, encounter that vulnerability and produce an emotional state of discipline, of courage, of self soothing and impartiality. Rather than fight flight. Friends, that's the ticket. And you can try all the tricks you want to to develop more knowledge. But the truth is you've got to retrain that emotional brain for the times that it's in, for the environment that it's in. Friends, this is the new day. This is why people fail in trading. They refuse to redevelop the emotional brain from what evolution gave us to what's needed. Trading survival instincts versus probability. Mind. That's the trader's state of mind. It can be developed. It does take effort, it does take work. But it also takes a very different way of envisioning how emotion and thought work together. Remember that corpus callosum is working both sides of the brain to produce a partnership. What we've done in trading is, is we've muscle bound the thinking brain, the left brain, and we've left the right brain, the emotional brain, just kind of like atrophy. We need to bring it up, we need to develop it so they're full partners again. The good news, it can be done. The brain is very malleable. It's called neural plasticity. Come and learn. Come and take a look. Look at the webinar that we're offering this month. Really take a look at the website, get into it, do some reading, lots of free stuff on the website. Start learning about what you need to be doing with that precious right brain that you left in caveman's hands to develop it.

For tomorrow, for the tomorrow of probability. That's where the success is. Thank you. And good luck.