Understanding Fear and Learning to Master It

Let's take a moment and take a look at the anatomy of a common problem for both experienced traders and newer traders in trading. You know that thing where your finger freezes on the mouse and you can't pull the trigger? Or if you're more experienced, it's that situation where you know that you need to be hitting about 80% of the valid setups that come your way. But suddenly you look and you say, oh, my God, I'm only hitting 35, 40% of them. And you know you haven't got the edge there. Well, let's take a look at what happens in that moment. Let's take from being mindless about the emergence of an emotion. It's taking over mind and producing behaviors like not being able to pull the trigger. Looking for more confirmations. Let's start right there, too. At first, you're sitting there, you're watching the computer screen, and what happens, you're sitting there, and it's just random. Then suddenly, according to your methodology, according to your rules, what you start seeing is something really begin to set up. You start seeing a setup take space and begin to really produce that situation that you're looking for confirmation. There's a setup potential here. And so all of a sudden, things get a little more alert. Things get there and say, you know something, wow, there's something maybe happening. And all of a sudden, what you start really noticing, if you're really looking.

If you're really looking at your body, you'll start noticing a little bit of tenseness in your body. You'll start noticing that you start holding your breath or start breathing a little high, and you're just noticing nothing's out there yet, but you notice that. Then you go along and there's nothing serious yet. But it comes to the next confirmation, and suddenly it's a real setup. And you're now beginning to look for an entry point. Ooh, things are getting tight. Things are getting excited. And you start noticing your body again. If you know to watch, this is what happens with most traders. They're not watching their bodies. They're mindless about how emotions are biological. And what I'm asking you to do here is to recognize, oh, my God, the emotion is biological. It's showing that the emotion has triggered. I feel tenseness in my body. I have a breathing signature. And what you're seeing is. It's arousing. The real question, are you alert? Because this is when you can intervene into the emotion before it starts making trouble in your ability to perform well. But let's say you go on and you push the emotion away. You're not looking for the body, you're not looking for anything. Then you start getting closer and closer and then you start noticing the self doubt that shows up in the mind. What if I'm wrong? What if I'm wrong? You know something, the confirmation's coming. Oh, the confirmation's here. I need to be looking for the entry point. It's imminent. And you're going, what happens here? What happens is all of a sudden there's self doubt. What if I'm wrong? What if I'm get in, get in, get in, get in. What if I'm wrong? What if I lose? And all of a sudden what started out in the body.

Has now emerged. Not just in the body, it's already grown, it's already hit a trip switch. That emotion now is flooding and most likely it's fear of anxiety, fear of loss, the fear of uncertainty, of losing capital.

There's your brain and it's, it's gone up to the head and it's taken over thinking. Suddenly you're having an internal dialogue. You could have been witnessing in your body if you had been looking. That's what we want to notice here. It was there all the time. Now you have self doubt. Now you got, now all of a sudden there's a triggering, there's this fearful part of the self that's going, let me get more confirmation, let me get more confirmation. I don't know if I really want to go into this. I need more confirmation. And you still notice. Okay, now your body's really into it. It's stiff, you know, you can feel the clenched teeth, you can feel the body, you can feel your gut. You can begin to go, you know something, I'm holding my breath, I'm fixated on the screen. I'm holding my breath again and again. And all of a sudden what you realize is you have been hijacked. You have been hijacked. But my friends, if you had been alert, you would have seen the hijack a lot earlier. You would have seen the arousing of the emotion, the triggering. Because ultimately that triggering, that emotion is there because there's a change in status in the environment. A setup is forming. It becomes possible. Then it moves from being possible to say, hey, this thing looks good, we're looking for an entry point and all of a sudden it's closer and closer. The emotion of course is going to trigger. The question is, is the traitor aware of it and able to work with that emotion? As it triggers. Because here's the trick. If you interrupt that and suddenly you have the ability of managing the committee of the mind, you suddenly stop the emotion from growing as anxiety or fear and you begin to say, you know, I can interrupt that, I can self soothe that, I can calm it down. I can get my mind back to disciplined impartiality, friends, that's what you can do. And it all started with mindfulness. It all started with observing the body, noticing that an emotion was emerging. That if you don't take care of that, that emotion is going to take over the quality of thinking that you're going to be bringing to the performance of entry. There's the kick. Do you notice it started at the very beginning. It may have started when the, when the setup was just forming. It may have started forward. Just the anticipation of you trading and knowing that you're going to be risking capital to uncertainty. Because bottom line, what this is all about.

That your brain, your mind sees uncertainty. Oh my gosh, I'm about to risk. And it is totally built for the last six and a half million years to stop you from taking that action, to stop you from putting everything at risk, anything at risk. That's what the survival brain, that's what your caveman brain is all about. You have to develop this mindfulness of your body, what your brains up to and what it's trying to do. It's trying to stop you from getting in trouble short term. And you, the trader's mind wants to be in a situation of where you're sitting there going, you know something? I need to work in probabilities. Your old brain can't do that, but by regulating it, you can calm that old brain down and you can act, perform from the probability. Mind takes work. But what I want you to notice, it started with the body. If you had only been, if you had been clued in to what your body was doing, you would have been clued in to the emergence of that internal dialogue, that self doubt. Whether or not you're a retail trader having problems with entry, getting into the trade, or whether or not you're an experienced trader, recognizing you're not getting into the number of perfectly valid setups that you need to be in order to be able to work your edge. That's the way it works, friends. Think about it. You can learn to observe and then you can learn to interrupt. And then more powerfully you can train the brain.

If you experience uncertainty instead of experiencing vulnerability to fight flight, you can train that brain to be disciplined and impartial at that moment of engagement, of the vulnerability of actually risking capital friends. That's the ticket. That is literally how it's done. And if you want to learn more, come to the website. Start really looking at how you train both sides of the brain, the left side and the right side of the brain, emotion and thinking, to be able to produce the traitor state of mind. Come and visit us. It's been a lot of fun and may you trade well.