Mindfulness in Trading: Building the Emotional Self Control to Achieve Your Potential

You see the potential, you see what can happen if you are able to make that gap distance between what you know you can do and what your methodology should be delivering and what your trading account looks like. And after a while you go, well, what is the problem here? Why can't I do what I know I can do? And the truth is it really boils down to two big areas. Two big areas. It's just not trading psychology, it's your biology. It's actually artifact from evolution.

We come stuck with the brain and hence a mind that comes forward out of it that is built for very different purposes than what a trader needs. It's a certainty based mind. Everything in your organism wants to control outcome. Everything. It wants to be right, it wants to control that outcome. It wants to be right and it does not want to be wrong. That's just not you being a winner. That's a whole nother, that's a whole trader psychology stuff. It's you as a caveman brain. That would be your limbic system wanting to survive and finding the best way.

And to it.

Probability.

Is dangerous, probability is loathed as the enemy. So, so right there you can really begin to see the problem that you have in trading. You have a brain built for certainty, certainty of survival. And you subject it to a world of probability.

Something's got to give. And what gives is the thinking brain. Almost every time, literally more than 90% of your functioning of what you're doing on a day to day basis with your brain and your mind, even while trading under stress is being done automatically outside of what you would call your awareness. It's happening in the limbic system and it's happening based on limbic learnings that it learned about how I can, how I, that's the organism, how I can best ensure survival. I have to be in control. And if I'm not in control then I'm going to trigger to the fight flight response. You hear that? The key is the very first thing you have to accept in trading is that you're not in control, that you can't control outcome. What you can control though, and this is the big powerful part of this work, is that you control your performance. And in doing so you bring the psychological edge to the game that allows you to really take advantage of the method edge that you have. But that's the first thing is that you have to give up control, you have to focus on performance. And this is an alien concept to the limbic brain. The limbic brain literally has decided going, you know, something When I engage uncertainty, what's really, really being revealed are the beliefs, not on a conscious level, but on a deep, deep level within the limbic system about your capacity to manage the stress, the challenges of living that are right in front of you. And when you, when you have like fear of entry, you're hearing the limbic brain tell you something very simple. I don't believe that you're going to be able to manage this and win. When you get into a trade and it goes against you and all of a sudden you say, well, I'm going to double down, I'm going to get it back. Revenge trading. What you're seeing is your limbic system doesn't believe in, it has to get it back or it's going to lose life instead of just a little bit of risk capital. So you're seeing this and you're seeing the play and this is happening automatically.

This has to be managed because ultimately it's your emotions that when you, on a limbic level, literally when you engage uncertainty, automatically an emotion is going to rise.

You can't stop that, friends. There is no freedom from emotion. However, you can become the designer of the emotions that show up to manage the uncertainty, to manage the stress of the vulnerabilities that happen when you engage uncertainty and you don't know the answer. Okay, that's the powerful part that you can reprogram the way the limbic system engages uncertainty. First, you learn how to regulate the emotion that's firing. And second, you begin to go in and say, you know something, I need to actually get at the level of meaning, the actual level of belief. That stops me from being able to perform at a really high level. Now that's the next point. The second part we can call traitor psychology. But I really want to call this really more about the community of the mind. Most people think they have thoughts, they have beliefs. Well, the truth is, is that there is no they in there. There is not a uner mind. What there is, is there's a community of rival programs that are constantly duking it out to get control of what you call yourself. You know, from a neural standpoint we would say it's one potential organization of a self. And no matter how good it's been in the past, it's not going to be good for the management of uncertainty. And what you're getting is this community of your mind shows up and all of a sudden you start having conversations of self doubt, you start having conversations of impulse, of take it, take it. Now.

There is no single One member of the mind, there is a group, and this is powerful. A lot of people believe, oh my God, you're thinking, I'm crazy. No, you're crazy. If you don't recognize what's going on underneath the hood of your mind. And all of a sudden you realize that within it there are in particular you find something that I call orphan and something that I call the inner critic. And you discover they have been in a dance with one another. And you'll experience this when you find the judge living within you, when you find the criticism, that self doubt and all of a sudden that's the inner critic. But then you also feel this other part of yourself, this fear, this need to prove the self by impulse, by doing. That's what we call, in working with me, orphan. And all of a sudden you go, wow, this has been running rampant in my mind and I have not seen it. That's correct. You have to develop the mindfulness of manage the emotion first and then the mindfulness where you step back and begin to watch and realize that thoughts are coming and going all the time. But thoughts are coming out of emotional programs, friends, that are below conscious threshold. Until you ferret down and get them, become a detective and get them, you're at their mercy. And that's why people blow up accounts. That's why they bleed, that's why they get stuck at levels they don't go in and do the work of reorganizing that community of the mind. Not only is there an inner critic, and you know, the Howard Simpson guy with look at the Devil and the angel and stuff like that, that's what we're talking about. It's living in you. It's not out there, it's right in here. And until you master that, you never get to achieve the potential, the good news. In the same way that there's criticism within you, judgment within you, fear within you, impulse within you, there's also discipline, there's also courage, there's also self soothing, there's also impartiality. And friends, it is these last four that are permanent members of the community of the mine that you, as a designer of the mind, if you want to be successful in trading, need to cultivate, nurture and to bring forward so that they're the emotional programs that show up to create the mind that engages uncertainty. The challenges of uncertainty are going to always be there. It's going to be stressful. You're not going to have control over outcome. However, what you do have control of is the mind that Engages the uncertainty. And friends, that's the holy grail. You are. You're the holy grail, but you're a diamond in the rough. You're going to have to work to build this. Learn how to manage the emotions, okay, that were given to us through evolution and realizing, well, they were very successful in whatever I was doing before. But man, I'll tell you something, they just, this winning attitude is not working with trading. There has to be something different. Then you go, okay, now I begin to understand the biology of what's wrong and I can learn how to calm that and soothe that. But more than that, you can get down to the deepest beliefs about your capacity to manage the uncertainty. Friends, that's the community of the mind. That's the trick. That's the piece that has to be learned for you to move from where you're an onlooker to your potential to where you're a participant in the creation of that potential for yourself as a trader. Friends, do you want to know more? Do you want to learn how to do this? Well, go to my website, get the free book, get my book. Begin to look at the courses that actually teach how to reorder the community of the mind so that you end up with a probability based mind rather than the mind of certainty that you came with. That's the ticket. Your job is to recognize you have a certainty based brain and mind that you have brought to trading. That's a fact. That's nothing can be done. However, if you stay stuck in that brain, you're going to have, you're going to experience a lot of suffering in trading. However, once you realize oh, that brains not suitable for this new environment of trading. I need to build a probability mind, friends, it can be done and I can help you learn. Come to the website, really begin to explore all the articles, all the videos and really start taking a look at the books and the courses because that's where the magic happens. It's where you learn the skills that allow you to design the mind that engages uncertainty rather than continuing this crazy stuff that goes on with an untrained mind. Come and see me. I wish you well and have a great new year.