Mastering the Source of Your Fear

Welcome everyone, my name is Randy Howell and I welcome you here. And sorry about the, uh, the little glitch we just had. First of all, let's find out if you can hear me and you can see me. And you should be seeing a slide that says Mastering Trader Psychology, and you'll see me up on the right. If some people would just simply type into the question box a why, I would— thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, Chris. We're good. We are good to go. Well, in that case, I have just a couple, couple routine housekeeping things is I save questions to the very end of the program, okay? And I answer them then, but please don't, when you come to a moment of where there you have a question about material we're talking, go ahead and write the question in. That'll give us stuff to do when we get to the end and we have that that silence where, what, what question do I have, and stuff like that. I'd appreciate that. So from there, let's get started. The deal is this, you know, everybody in trading knows that trading's a numbers game. It's probability. You don't, you know, you just got it. You have to work it and you got to plan. And if you're, if you're a well-trained trader, by this time you will have had a plan. You will have a statistical edge in your methodology that if you can, if you can only trade that plan in the way that you planned that trade, you'd be doing well. But the truth is, is that it almost invariably happens is that people get into trading, they push, they push, they push, they push, they buy this system, buy that, get this teacher, they get that teacher. And they keep thinking that they're going to overcome this and they are going to make things happen. And usually somewhere after 2 to 4 years, they discover that their psychology is really getting in the way. So what they do is they read a bunch of books, mine, mine, mine also, and they think that's going to solve the problem. Then they come again to this game and they say, okay, now I've got the psychology. I know this stuff. Stuff, and then they try again and blow up again. And the question is, what is actually going on here? You know that it's a numbers game, you know that it's probability, and you've accepted that, you've accepted the risk, all that. Yet when you're faced with the uncertainty of that risk, everything kind of falls apart. The truth is, one of the big huge things is that what we really don't understand— it's not like you're going tilt, like you don't know there's something wrong with you. What happens is that your survival instincts out of your emotional caveman brain are sitting there, and when you are facing, when you are facing uncertainty. And understand, by definition, trading is about the management of uncertainty. You're getting in there because it is uncertain, and your job is to use a statistical edge to be able to find enough wins so that you're actually pulling more capital out of the markets than you're putting back in. So you've gotten that. At the same time though, nobody told you that your survival instincts— caveman brain— of the emotional brain the powerful news, and that is, mm, your emotional brain does not understand winning and losing the way your thinking brain does. All that stuff goes out the door because ultimately your thinking brain thinks it's in control and doesn't know how to even locate the emotional brain. People are deeply blown away when I assign them a simple breathing exercise to do during when they're managing uncertainty, and they find out they've stopped breathing, they're holding their breath, they're panting, they're holding— their fists are clenched, all that stuff. And they don't realize they've already been hijacked. They've already been hijacked. Because ultimately, your caveman brain understands winning and losing very differently than your thinking brain. Okay, and what the trouble is that traders really don't like to acknowledge that knowledge is never enough to serve to overcome the survival instincts of the primitive emotional brain. Okay, the truth is that your ancient brain, the one that you shared with chimpanzee Okay, it can't tell the difference between money and death, and it sees when you're actually facing uncertainty. Your brain is programmed for the last probably 120 million years and 606 million years as a human being. It has programmed that when you engage uncertainty, you are either going to avoid the uncertainty or you're going to attack it so that you can be certain again. And that your brain is built to impose a deception that you can be in control. You can be in control of uncertainty, and you can do that in the outside world. It's like the famous saying in the recovery movement is denial is more than a river in Egypt. It's the same thing is that we deny that we really don't have the kind of control that we would like to think we have. So the deal, the big deal here, if you get nothing out of here, but this, you've done a lot. Your brain sees uncertainty as the threat of death. That triggers the instinctual responses and it can't tell the difference between a loss or death. It just sees this, oh my God, this is a dangerous situation, I could lose money, I could lose my life. Money, life, money, life. That's the big thing. And until you can actually calm down, calm that instinct down from firing, you're going to never get the kind of control you want. You'll start sabotaging, you'll have, you'll have that stuff where you revenge trade, you overtrade, you do all that stuff because you're not getting at the very fundamental nature of— you're asking the brain to do something that it was not built to do and does very poorly. Okay, and there are some people who just come in here and they turn on the computer and it's like they've won the genetics lottery. We're not talking about those people. Those are about 2.5% of the population. We're talking about the rest of us. Okay. So we're looking at that and getting this basic thing. This is what you really truly have to understand: a threat to your money is a threat to your life. And that is what triggers that caveman brain to start avoiding or attacking the source. Just like this guy right here, he's facing a bear, and all of a sudden what happens is that All that, all that thinking brain is doing now is being blown away out of the water, and you're either trying to flee or fight the uncertainty of looking at death right in the eye. Okay, this is how the caveman brain sees uncertainty. Okay, and the truth is, those survival instincts easily just hijack the thinking brain. If you look at the thinking brain as, uh, basically creating explanations, creating alibis and stuff like that, you would have a much better idea of what's going on. It's, it's, it's making up excuses and alibis for what the emotional brain has already decided. And the problem is that the thinking brain cannot understand the language of the emotional brain. And besides that, the thinking brain is arrogant enough to believe that it doesn't need to. It's got this system, it's got logic, it has all this stuff. And the truth is, it's not true. And this is where, this is where it comes down to. When it says cortex, you're looking at the new brain, you're looking at the thinking brain. When you see the thalamus, you are looking at the central control center of the limbic system, of the old caveman brain. And out of that, it is— it's using the hippocampus that is looking at memory and stuff like that. And it can easily pull up memory of bad things when you face uncertainty. Okay, if you've ever not been able to get into trades and stuff like that because you've lost, say, 4 or 5, and you, you've lost a big one the last time, and all of a sudden you can't do it, that is— that is the— this primitive memory retrieval, pulling it up, and the thalamus is looking at it going, danger, danger, danger, danger. And then it shoots message down to the amygdala, and before you know it, the negative emotions, the instinctual emotions, are fired and they're pulsing through the body as chemistry, blowing out the thinking brain and that great plan that you had. What traders don't do is they don't sit there and say, well, how do I go about changing the observer that I am that engages the uncertainty? We know what historical, historical interpretation will do. It's going to keep triggering this stuff where only, only 2.5% people were consistently profitable and making good money. The rest of the people are going to have to train their brain. So out of this, this is what I really want you to understand, is that what most people don't understand about trading is that it's not— uncertainty is not the enemy. The enemy is you. The enemy is you. Is the deal is, is that most people really aren't willing to learn what really makes them tick and work around and say, I have to, I have to be able to reprogram the very brain that gives rise to the mind that I bring to uncertainty. Or, if you know your enemy and you know yourself, you need not, you need not fear. However, but if you know yourself but not the enemy, victory is going to be elusive. Okay, so ultimately this is really about every fear that you have in trading originates with the fear of uncertainty. And understand that fear of uncertainty is at the level of a one-cell organism. Okay, so now we're going, oh wow, if I'm listening to Randy And I'm actually trying to figure out that I'm beginning to recognize something, is that I have, I have evolutionary psychology that was developed a long time ago. And if I cannot correct that evolutionary psychology, or at least use my thinking brain to produce a way that changes the observer, the beliefs that you have about your ability to manage uncertainty while you engage uncertainty, this is going to be a long ride, and it's going to be a painful ride. And you're going to have to decide. It's very common, uh, I'll talk to people who are deeply— they're, they're very concerned, they know they have a serious problem, and they need, they need to correct that psychology, okay? And then they will come to me, they'll talk to me and stuff like that, and say, you know something, I just think I should be able to do this myself. And I used to try to talk sense into these people, but now I just say, well, I'll tell you what, I really wish you luck. I hope this works out really well for you. And if you come to a moment of where you finally come to the moment where you've lost enough capital and it's painful enough that you're willing to face the, basically, the inconvenient truth is that your brain was not built to do what you're asking it to do. You are going to have to learn to be able to organize it very differently. You can do that, but it's not as easy as you think, okay? And bottom line is, you experience this fear of uncertainty as death, okay? And out of that, you can do other things, but ultimately, this is the, this is the most fundamental, primal part of our existence when we're being exposed to uncertainty. Understand, our, our ancestors faced uncertainty on a daily basis, and children— 95% of the children were dead by 5. That was just the way things were. You face that uncertainty all the time, and they built up a story in their head where they deceived themselves into believing that they could control, could control it. You're going to have to get to the moment of where you realize that I want to control it, but the obviousness is, is that I'm not. And how do I go about— how do I go about changing that? Because ultimately, this is another graphic of where I really want you to take a look at this. Let's just say that the person on the left, the higher cortex, they have all the knowledge in the world. Okay. And they're sitting there and everything's fine. And the problem is that higher cortex does not know the language of the emotional system. So it doesn't even know it's there. When I assign breathing and tension exercises, which are part of an emotion, to people, what happens, they're blown away to see how tense they are, how much their breath is being held. What you're looking at is when there is not stress, when you're not facing uncertainty, information goes straight from the brainstem and all the other stuff. It goes up the higher cortex, the thinking brain. It makes a decision and then it goes back down. And if you're working with play money where there's no risk, no death involved, then what happens is you're minting money. But the moment that risk is there, suddenly that higher cortex is disabled by the thalamus, just like that. And then before you know it, information is fed from there back into the amygdala, and it becomes a high emotion from like anger, fear, excitement, love, hate, disgust, and frustration. Those are the emotions that you're trading from, creating the mind that engages the uncertainty that you refuse to acknowledge. And actually do something about. Okay, so this is just something that happened a long time ago, back when, um, there was danger around everywhere. You had to be prepared for it, and those lightning-fast survival instincts really were useful. Right now, you know, there are no lions, tigers, and bears on your trading screen. But your emotional brain sees that, sees all that information very differently than you, okay? And you have a choice. And this is the thing, is, is your thinking brain is easily disabled. If you have ever, um, just, uh, revenge trade, if you've ever just overtraded, if you've ever just blown up an enormous amount of capital, you know exactly what I'm talking about. If you've ever had just, uh, when you, you're scared to even get in, that's it. That's what it looks like. That's the output. Now the deal is, is your brain is built to control outcome and to be right, even if it has to lie to itself. And what you'll discover in trading is most people lie to themselves. They want to believe that lie and they want to You know, they want to be able to— when they talk to other traders, they want to talk about how in control they are and stuff like that. And they tell all these stories about the one that got away. But the deal is, and you are not in control. And until you learn that you're not in control, no matter how much of a control freak you have, you're going to have a problem. And this is like with the Alpha. You know, the Alpha comes in from business or corporate and they've done very well because they think they're in control. They want to win. And they can make things happen. They, they, you know, I'm going to go in and just make a lot of money. And they go in and they don't, they don't just blow up accounts, they blow up net worth. Again, they think they are in control and they have not seen the evidence to the contrary until they get to trading and suddenly they realize, oh my God, I'm not in control, and it's scary. Okay. And this is the exact kind of mind you do not want to bring. And what do they want to do? They want to win. And will they try to make up for prior losses? Yeah. Can you make up for prior losses? Now, you can get into a mind that starts giving you an edge psychologically. You can get into a gambling mood where you hit a streak of winners, but you're not making up for prior losses. Okay. Um, this is the deal, is that your thinking brain does not see all this in operation, okay? But this is what's happening every day in your trading. And don't believe me, look at your trading account, look at the health of it, look at the what happens with you when you trade, and start noticing that how easy the thinking brain is blown out of the water. And clearly that's what you want trading, okay, making logical, rational decisions. But you don't control the threat of uncertainty, and the thinking brain's blown, blown. So you're going to have to build a different way, and you're also going to have to get rid of your notions of winning and losing. More about that a little later. So the truth is, is you are biased by evolution to believe it can make winning happen. I'm going to make it happen. I'm going to slugfest. I'm gonna, I'm gonna show them. This is just simply an ancient brain showing up and blowing out modern mind, okay? You're going to have to learn to deal with uncertainty, with not knowing. And I know that that's not what— that's not the way we've evolved, but if you want to become a successful trader, that's what you're going to have to do. So the truth is the brain that you brought to trading simply is not built for the task you're asking it to do, okay? Because ultimately, what you can't control is also teaching you how to let go and to let something else. And the truth is, is what you discover about this thing is you do not control outcome, but you do control the quality of the mind that you bring into the moment to Engage with uncertainty. And this is one of the most difficult parts of trading, is accepting that you're not in control when everything— the way you've grown up, the way you've learned, everything was about controlling outcome, winning. And the truth is, is that if you take a winning attitude to trading, you're going to lose. Because ultimately in trading where you know there's going to be a lot of losses, the person who really knows how to manage losses is the one that wins. Okay, so there's reasons. Now the question really is what we should be at this point all the time is, well, how do you go about building a brain that can calmly engage uncertainty? It seems like I should be able to do it just by brute strength. No. I should be able to do it by staying logical. No. I should be able to do it by putting my emotions at the door and telling them to shut up till I get back. Nope. None of that. You're going to have to acknowledge that you have a mismatched thing, and you're going to have to learn. Every trader goes on this journey. Most of course never make it because they refuse to do the heavy emotional lifting that gets in at the very core basic beliefs about your ability to manage uncertainty. Okay, all the bravado blown away because the trading gods could care less about what you say. The trading gods want to know, are you willing to manage the one thing that you can manage— the mind you bring into the moment. And this is what we've learned right here. Here's a little piker, and what happens, he's like a tough thing, and he's really— he's, he's going to do that, okay? And at the same time, one person saying the volume is very low. Ask the other people if they can hear you. Yeah, someone is saying that my volume is low. If you would, please go and check and let me know if the volume is low. Okay. I can do something about that. It was okay just a little while ago. So volume is great. Okay. So to the guy who has low volume, it probably is on your end. You might look for volume controls and things like that. And, um, good luck. Volume is great. Volume— yep, we're, we're good. Okay, so we're here and we realize that this kind of attitude, thinking that you're going to, you're going to force your way into victory, is not going to work. Now, this, by the way, is what it's really like to face uncertainty. This is a photograph that I took earlier this year. We were in Volcanoes National Park in Hawaii, and we've been going to that park for, oh God, I don't know, 38, 40 years, and we've never seen an eruption. What you're looking at is an eruption where you can see some of the red coming up, but what I want you to do is take a look on the right side of this photograph you're going to see these little spirals going up. Those are tornadoes being made by this, um, by this volcano. Now if you want to see what uncertainty looks like, this is it. We're, we're in that park and we actually start having clobs of things start falling near us and around us, and it's the tornadoes that are lifting material up into the sky, 5,000 to 10,000 feet, then it falls and it starts hitting different things randomly. This is uncertainty, okay? And the only way that the rangers can do anything about this— they have no control at all over this volcano. All they can do is close the park down, okay? So you're looking at a source of uncertainty from Mother Nature. The deal is, is this is what you're dealing with every day in your trading. You are looking at the uncertainty monster and you have a mind that thinks it can manage it. Okay, so, whoops, I'm sorry. Now, okay, good, good, good. Okie dokie, I like that. Um, So now the question really becomes, how do you develop a psychological edge for the trading mind? You know, uh, I, I have no doubt that a lot of people have Mark— done Mark Douglas's book, my book, and all sorts of things trying to figure it out. And you think, okay, he's got this thing down. But what happens is that people keep using books like that and don't realize that No, you actually have to change things on a cellular level. The first thing you have to do is you have to come to the moment where you realize what you know about emotion is not working and helping you to become a profitable trader. The emotion's not psychological. The emotion is, um, basically it's biological. It's a biological action potential that coordinates activity between the environment— that would be the markets— and the organism— that would be the trader. And when you begin to understand that, oh my God, those— when an emotion fires before thinking begins, the chemistry of that emotion is in the bloodstream already altering perception. Okay, that's what you're up against, friends, and you're trying to use a pop gun to do it. To do— to start countering this stuff, you're going to have to develop emotional regulation, the ability to control the level of intensity of the emotion so that it doesn't hit the tripwire and flow into a hijacking. The second— the next thing you're going to have to learn is mindfulness. And the big great truth in mindfulness is that you and your thoughts are not the same. These are— those are not your thoughts. In fact, thoughts are driving you, and you begin to realize that you have been blind to the goings and comings of the thought life running through your head. And this tool, mindfulness, allows you to get to the door of the mind, and that's where all the action at. In there, you're going to find the self-limiting beliefs about, um the practically every trader, you know, basically I don't have a business if it weren't for a bunch of guys that are still trying to prove to someone, often their father who's already dead, that they matter, that they're meaningful, that they're, they're, they're a chip off the old block. And the truth is we have a thriving business, okay? So those are the beliefs there, but nobody wants to talk about them. But every, every last trader has this at the very tail end about going, oh my God, what if I'm not good enough? What if I, what if this, what if I fail? What if I run out of time? What if I run out of money? Blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, the truth is, until you come to the moment of controlling the mind that you bring to uncertainty, is that you're going to be stuck with the self-limiting beliefs that drive your emotional architecture. Then the good news though is that you're going to have to develop your inner strength. We have, we have internal resources that are unbelievable. We, we as an animal are the animal that can become captain of their own destiny. We can become the designer of the way we engage uncertainty, not like all our other life forms. And then out of that, when you develop those resources, you begin realizing that there will always be struggle. But now you have a mind that can deal with that struggle, so you actually manage the mind that trades. This is where it starts getting fun, because ultimately, when you realize that emotions are biological in nature and they take over the trading mind, you, you realize that learning to manage your emotional nature from a different perspective is absolutely essential. Essential if you're going to become a successful trader. Then what happens in mindfulness— this is a good example of mindfulness— is that in mindfulness, most people I know that in trading, they come to me and they've beaten themselves up. They're their own worst enemy. It's, it's all like that. And what happens is that they are consumed by their thinking, all their shoulds and all their ifs and what if this, what if this, blah blah blah. You get caught up, you get sucked into, you fuse to all those thinkings. At the same time, the observer mode is you are looking at thoughts not as who you are, but you're looking at these as historical in nature and were developed. And what you're not— what you're looking for is you're looking to get down to the belief that is below that thought, to the emotion below that thought, and then to the beliefs that drive the whole thing. That's what you want to change on that level. Just changing thought— cognitive behavioral therapy. I was a cognitive behavioral therapist before I, I became an emotional intelligence guy, and I can tell you right now, it's changing, changing thought. Thought is the actual outcome of a very complicated emotional system that goes on in the brain, and you're acting— your thinking is simply a behavioral output, okay? What you're looking for is how the emotions have become habitualized and what the beliefs are beneath them. That is what you're looking for, okay? Most people simply have fused to their thoughts, and they believe the guy who's talking, ranting around in his head, that is you. It's not. That is one particular construction of a self, because ultimately what you have— your emotions are kind of like a— your brain is like a community of rival emotional programs that are constantly duking it out to assert control over the self that comes out of your potential. That's what you call I. And it just so happens that I probably is not going to work in trading, but if you step back, you realize that I is simply the ones that— the emotional programs that won in constructing that. That is when you start really going, oh my God, I have been— I've had this backwards for my entire life. And this is what emotional intelligence can do rather than cognitive type of therapies. You want to look at the emotional intelligence model because that's actually telling you what makes you tick. And you're going to have to change the way you tick if you're going to be a successful trader, or prove me wrong, okay? And ultimately, then you also understand that the mind is really— gosh, it's like a governing committee, just like this, where various forces are at play, some destructive, some constructive, but But the truth is, is you have not become a student of the mind. You have not become an observer of the mind. You haven't staked out and said, you know something, I'm beginning to recognize that my job really is self-mastery. People who produce self-mastery find trading easy, okay? But they deal— they're dealing with struggle very differently. They know that struggle, it's ambigu— ambiguous out there. So you realize that these emotional programs are duking it out for control, and your job is to say, how do I wake up and start actually managing who actually is running my mind at a particular moment while I'm engaging in uncertainty? That is emotional intelligence, friend, and that's what you want, because the in— the, uh, The historical internal dialogue, that's where you're beating yourself up, you're criticizing yourself, you're talking like you've really got game and you can go in there and make a lot of money and oh yeah, you've got it done. That's the self-talk that comes out of all this emotional nature. So the thing is, is, and, uh, and forget about mind over matter. The trading gods will show you that doesn't work very easily. So You also come to know the inner critic and the adaptive voice. The inner critic is that part of you that judges you, that criticizes you, that condemns you and sets you up to do really stupid things. You get sucker punched, and it goes by various names and various stuff. I'm, I'm on the psychological end of the ball, so we call— I call it inner critic. But the thing is, it is always there, and it will— it does— it does not want your success. It really wants to limit the possibility of who you can be. The adapted voice, little, um, Red Riding Hood here, that is the part that— that is the fear that shapes your responses to uncertainty, either by avoidance or aggression or walking into an ambush. Okay, they're there, and you're going to have to master that because it's going to be there all the time. That's where a lot of my work involves waking people up to what's going on right underneath their noses that they've been trying to ignore, and then recognizing that you have these internal resources that you can pull forward, and it manages uncertainty on a level that is unbelievable. So The limbic response to uncertainty. And that little small blob, that's the emotional brain. And that's, um, believe it or not, that's actually the cognitive brain. That is what you know you believe, okay? The huge chunk over there is what you don't know you believe. Most people really haven't recognized the meaning-making machine in your head. And a lot of these beliefs are simply below conscious threshold. You see them play out in your actions. That's why looking at your trading account from a very different perspective is really important. It's telling you the truth. Your trading account is telling you the truth, whereas your brain will lie to you in a heartbeat. Okay, so you are looking to be able to make those beliefs you don't know that are driving a lot of your decisions. Okay, like that thing I told you about just a few minutes ago is that I don't have a business if it weren't for a bunch of guys and girls that are still trying to prove to someone that they matter, to prove that they're worthy, to prove that they have inherent worth. Okay, and the truth is, is, um, we're all going to have to reprogram ourselves. And this is the point you have to get, but this is the thing that you really have to do, is you have to go in and start working at a much deeper level about reprogramming the beliefs that drive your perception. Okay, and of course we teach that. And ultimately, what we really want to do— we know that living within you as part of your potential is the discipline of a ruler. That's being able to maintain order under pressure. There is also the courage of a warrior that allows you to turn toward your fear, to master it— not be a thug about it, but to master it. You also have living within you the self-soothing, the tender loving kindness of a caregiver. That is the most essential change, change tool that you're going to find. It is that caregiver, it is that emotional program of self-love that is, is able to tease the old neural circuits, self-limiting circuits apart, and to reorganize them in higher functioning. You would see that as calming down and not getting, not getting just absolutely ambushed. And also what lives within you, if you have these other 3 different archetypes, emotional programs working, you find the impartiality, the clear thinking of a sage. These are part of your endowment from many millions of years ago. They are there. They're part of the internal resources in your brain. And what I have learned how to do is to be able to access them, to start pulling them up, to start teaching you to have them become part of the trading committee rather than the bad dudes who've been causing you all the problems. So that's what's inside you. Okay. And if you get into this game, you are going to be in personal development. The brain that you brought is not going to work. You're going to have to develop a new brain, a new way of responding to uncertainty that is not fearful of it or trying to control it. And I use a, a process called memory enrichment where we're manipulating the way the brain encodes memory to be able to access these empowered emotional programs so that you can pull them up as a skill rather than being stuck what history gives you. Friends, this is the missing link. It is a— it's a powerful thing, and I don't know why it's not taught all the time, but it's not. Ultimately, and my, my thing about affirmations and visualizations, they make you feel good, but under stress they fall apart, okay? That's what I want. That, that's all I'm going to say. And a lot of people really like affirmations, they really like visualizations, they like NLP, they like mind over matter stuff. And they come into a place like trading where feeling good means nothing. You know, the thing is, are you extracting more capital out of the markets than you're putting back in? That's the bottom line. And you find out that that energy cleansing and stuff like that, you guess what, what happens is Under stress— and understand, stress is uncertainty, that's the game that you're playing every day— you, you need to build a mind. And what you're doing is you focus on your performance, not the outcome. You can control the mind that you bring into the moment. You take a look at this surfer, the truth is he doesn't control the wave, he doesn't control the ocean. He controls his mind that is performing, and if he does well, he has a great ride. If he doesn't, he takes a spill. So we're actually saying we need to be able to learn how to produce a flow moment where all these different parts come together in the right components. And in my case, you have to have the discipline of a ruler, you have to have the courage of a warrior, You have to have the self-soothing of a caregiver, and you have to have that discernment of the sage. When you do that, you get into this flow moment, and you're able to trade without fear. You trade what you see as an observer that is no longer petrified of uncertainty. That's what it means. And, um, fundamentally What you really have to do is become a really good loser, because you're playing, you're playing with probability, you're not playing with certainty. Even in the top athletic organizations, you discover they're not playing to win, they're playing to perform. A couple years ago, the Atlanta Falcons are playing the Patriots, and the Falcons just pound them going into the third quarter. They're like 28 points up. And what you saw on the other— on the Falcons end, you saw them, hey, everything's great, everything's cool. They lost their edge. On the other side, you're seeing coaches get into the faces of the player, and all they're shouting is, do your job, just do your job. The Patriots won that game, okay? It wasn't about winning, it was about performing. And It is double plus that in trading. The marshmallow test, um, this is really about impulse. There was a test a number of years ago where they told kids just like these that you could have that one marshmallow right now, but if you could wait 5 minutes when, when the researcher left and come back, if the marshmallow were still there, you'd get 4 more. The truth is, is very few kids chose the, uh, 4. They, they started out, they'd struggle. You see these guys right here struggling. But that is the same kid brain is in yours too. You know, you, you have the orphan is kind of like Arrested Development, and you're going to have to teach it how to have patience. Okay, so that you're no longer trying to make things happen. What you're doing is you're patiently waiting for the markets to show you what it's willing to give you. So we want you to pass the marshmallow test. And the truth is, at first you think about, oh, it's going to be about making money. I want to be able to make— I can make money doing this, and I don't have to— I, I can It's gonna be great. And then you find out in order for you to make money, you're going to have to master the mind. You're going to have to master yourself at the deepest levels, because the truth is the fears that we don't face and master, they become our limits. And you see that in trading every day. And the truth is, the cougar is an apex predator. He does not chase. What he does, he climbs a tree, he waits patiently. He knows the communicate— the transportation network of the forest and where the whitetail deer is going to be. And the cougar is waiting there patiently, patiently, patiently for the forest to give it an opportunity. The deer never sees it. The deer can't crane its neck up The tiger— the, the, uh, the lion is a good 15, 20 feet up. And if you were to see one of these guys, a mountain lion, actually in the process of hunting, you'd think that maybe they're, um, they're just being lazy and sleeping. But no, waiting. Then it drops, and hopefully it snaps the deer's neck before it hits the ground. If the deer gets up and runs The cougar doesn't chase. It goes back up the tree, starts over again, takes the loss, a small loss, and does the deal over again. This is the edge. This is the kind of mind you had to develop. So friends, I want you to understand something, is that this can be taught. What I encourage you to look at is, first of all, if this is the first time you've seen me and heard about me and stuff like that, get our free book, okay? And then if you're still just kicking tires, get my book and then start looking. Uh, ultimately there's, there's retail stuff you can get, guided meditation, stuff like that. But ultimately it comes down to our group course and to our individual course. The group course, we've just started one right now and we'll be having one that starts later, okay? But the deal is, is that, um, Um, take a look at it, read about it. Most people start the course a month or two before the actual posted date because they realize how important it is to start rehabituating the way they react to uncertainty. Okay? So we've done that in the individual courses for people who are really serious. That is 10 sessions with me over a period of 3 or 4 months. Where we get into— we get in— we get into your head, man, and we really work at that. But it's a— it's for a person who really says, no, I really want to work with the teacher. Okay, so, um, I am ready for some questions, and I see one already. Uh, this is from Felipe. And hello, let me see if I can do this. Hello Randy, what exercises or techniques help cultivate the internal observer, and how can this posture assist in avoiding the impulsivity or revenge? You know, pick up any book on Zen Buddhism and Buddhism. There are so many, uh, I mean, I have a, I have a retail guided meditation on my website that is basically where you're learning to observe fast-moving thoughts and you're using your, um, your breath as a rheostat to slow down thoughts so you can look at it. That's one, but there are tons and tons and tons of things like that. And the truth is, is that, uh, when you start being able to step back out of thought, what you discover is that you're not as reactive. And that's really, that's really the big deal. Okay, and Felipe goes on, so if I can create an alter ego— no, you don't create an alter ego. What you do is you find out the internal resources living within you that you want to start bringing forward, and you start learning how to do that. A self-image of a professional trader, it could be, uh, what I am, what I am looking for. And I, I don't encourage people with professional traders. I'm looking for people to find the inner ruler, the discipline. I'm looking for people to find the compassion. I'm looking for people to find the courage and the impartiality. And I do use symbolic representation to help them develop that, and I'm, I'm definitely, um, I'm, I'm all for that. But the thing is, is it starts with the observer, and then you start looking and realizing that there is a plethora of, um, of aspects of self, archetypes, emotional programs running around their mind that you can organize. And what I would— you know, my book Mindful Trading lays this thing out pretty, pretty dang easy, okay? But, um, there will be, there will be, um, mindfulness stuff all over the internet, okay? So, um, Let's see here. Here's Chris. I still struggle with impulsiveness and sometimes revenge trading. I will be focusing on my breathing before and during my trading sessions. Will this help? It will help. What happens is emotional regulation controls the intensity of an emotion so that it doesn't hit the hijack part. So you get to do there, but the thing is you still need to find You need to find these heroic aspects of yourself. You need to find, uh, the patient one. You need to find those aspects inside you to be able to pull forward so that they become common, familiar voices in your mind rather than the old stuff that's blowing you up. Okay, well, I think that's it. And what I'm going to do is I am going to wish you guys well. I have really enjoyed myself. I, I'm passionate about this stuff because it is so, it is so absolutely cool. And at the same time, what I know, I know that, um, everybody needs to go and they need to find this all by themselves, okay? They need to be able to find and say, you know something, I'm going to learn how to do this all by myself. That's great. When you come to a moment of where you hit a brick wall, that would be a time to really look into the psychology. And mine is based on emotional intelligence and Jungian archetypes. Okay. And I find it, it has been, it's been a, it's really gratifying watching people be able to learn how to do this. So I am going to stumble my way, uh, through shutting this down. And I, I want— I only want the best for you guys, okay? And I wish you well. And if we have the privilege of meeting each other, I look forward to that moment. Be well, friends. Be well. Good night.