Unlocking Your Hidden Trading Potential

You know, you see that potential every day in your trading. You know that it's in you to be able to be able to play the game of trading at a much higher level than, than you currently are. Yet you're going, you know something, it's hidden from me for some reason. I can't achieve what I know is possible for me. And you go, what's going on here? What is really going on here? What creates the gap between, you know, what's your potential in trading and what you're actually realizing at this moment? Usually you can see that gap clearly in your trading account and you can also see it not just in the trading account, but you can actually see it at particular moments in trading where everything comes together. And the compression of trading makes it impossible to avoid the beliefs that are driving your performances at a subconscious level, a limbic level, if you will. So that's where it really begins. And.

How do you go about getting at that potential, developing it so that it becomes an actual skill? Because I'll tell you something, it's really about what we can't see about ourselves that gets in our way. If we could see the problem, then we would do something about it. But the thing is, it's like we're running into a glass ceiling. We keep hitting it, but we don't see it. We run into it. We go, why am I keep on running into this same problem over and over again? I mean like how many times have you not got into a trade that was a valid setup? How many times have you got out early? How many times have you just simply not taken the loss when you should have and you end up just getting a monster loss? How many times you said, I'm going to follow my plan and then you jump off into the areas. This is what we're looking at. The beliefs that drive performance are back there literally your perception and your action, they are almost flip sides of the same coin. But you don't really see the perception that's driving your performances. That's what we need to take a look at. We want to be able to bridge that gap so that you can say, you know something, I get it now. I see what's happening. I began to understand that the self learning beliefs that I really don't even acknowledge to myself, you know, they're the ones manifesting and they're the ones blocking me from achieving the potential I know I have in trading. That's the ticket, friends. The perceptual map that you have that defines trading has to change in order to be able to see a better route through the trading to the kind of success you're looking for. And mostly what people have done over time is they've used some form of positive self talk, you know, the affirmations, the visualizations. I'm going to be positive. I'm going to really, I'm going to take all that stuff and I'm going to see it in a positive light. I know that the universe is working for me, all that, blah, blah, blah. And it feels good, it makes you feel good. But people who've been doing this for a long time realize that, yeah, it makes you feel good in the moment, but it wears off pretty fast and you're back there again. To really get at really your potential as a trader, you're going to have to do deeper work. You're going to have to get at the very issues that are causing the problem. You're going to have to dig and you have to be willing to do the heavy emotional lifting required to change the foundational beliefs that drive your performances without your even knowing it. And where it starts is recognizing that you do not have emotions.

They have you. You are an emotional being. You're not a rational being. What you are is a rationalizing being where your cognitive, this big huge neocortex of yours makes up excuses, alibis about what the emotional brain has already decided. So if you take a look at it and begin to understand. Oh, thinking is highly overrated. Yeah. If you were to look at your perception like a locomotive, what you discover is this. At the caboose. That's your thinking. Okay. It's just kind of an afterthought. It's behavior that happens after all the work has been done. But then you go to the locomotive driving that train, call you. That's the emotions. It builds up steam. It's powerful. Yes. And who is the engineer? The engineer is your beliefs that you hold about your ability to manage uncertainty. That's the locomotive that drives your trading. You've got the emotions. They're there. You can't ignore. You can't ignore them. You don't have them. They've got you. Your job is to learn how to use them to intelligently use emotions to generate thinking thoughts. The caboose, it's the afterthought. It produces the alibis. So you get that and you go, whoa, have I been barking up the wrong tree? Absolutely. And you're going to have to do something about it. And here's the missing link we've already alluded to it you and your thoughts are not the same. And again, just like emotions, you don't have thoughts, they're having you, they're creating your experience. And so the very first thing you begin to recognize is oh my goodness, all my thinking, all that cognitive high power that I need to be bringing to the trading arena is actually emotional state dependent. Change has to happen not at the thought level, not at the cognitive level. You can't talk yourself out of a self limiting belief. Change has to occur at the emotional level and particularly where that emotion is connected to your beliefs and specifically beliefs that you probably don't know you have. They're called implicit beliefs. They're beliefs about your capacity to manage uncertainty. It is here that change has to occur. And to get there you're going to have to learn how to regulate emotion. You have to understand emotion very differently than probably you understand it. Now. Emotions are not feelings, they are not psychological, they are biological action potentials. You are the embodiment of emotion and because you're the embodiment of emotion, you begin to realize there's no escape from emotions. We try that, we pretend that we don't have them and yet we see them in our trading account. The results in our trading account when we get hijacked, we over trade, we under trade, we revenge, trade we can't take, we can't deal with losing. Those are all emotional responses to uncertainty, friends. And we realize it is the beliefs that have to change and thinking is not the way to get to it. You actually have to go and you have to convince the limbic system to come up with another very primitive belief about your ability to manage uncertainty. Now to get there, what I do, I conceive of the brain as a community of rival programs and they're duking it out to be able to control what forces come together and create the self. That's you. Okay?

Now if we take that concept and we move it to the mind, this miracle call mind, suddenly those forces in the brain, emotional programs are given voice. And suddenly you have a head full of thought, they have voice. And don't kid yourself, everybody has lots of different voices running around the head. The problem is, is that you don't know what they are. They're uncomfortable and you need to learn how to manage them. You need to take what I call the governing committee of the self, the mind. And you need to wake up and realize there's a mutiny going on, there's struggles going on. You have to get back control of the mind that you bring into the Moment of performance. So in getting control of the mind that you bring into the moment, this is called emotional self mastery. And then what you really do is you realize that you no longer, you don't control outcome, you never did. We like to think we did before we got into trading. But trading makes it very clear that we do not control outcome. And that's what frustrates a lot of traders. They think they can control outcome, be right. They want to win and they don't want to lose. And they are certain. The problem is certainty itself is an emotion and what you're feeling is chemistry. You become certain your beliefs are right no matter what your trading account is telling you. And in here you're beginning to listen to your trading account and as really kind of like an eye into the soul of the traitor. And you begin. I need to reconstruct it. I need to. Instead of coming from a place of fear, coming from a place of bravado, I need to be coming from a place of discipline, of courage, of self soothing and impartiality. These my friends, are emotional programs. These you can train yourself to be in the present moment with as you trade. Instead of taking all the programs that came from history and evolution because those are for your short term survival, but terrible for the practice of trading, you're going to have to change them all. So what you do is you learn to control the mind that you bring into the moment that engages uncertainty. That's the trading mind. And what you discover is that yes, a completely different human being shows up that is focused on performance, not outcome. When you're focused on that performance, and believe me, that takes a lot of work, your primitive brain is going to try to take you the other way. But when you finally get to the moment where you train the mind to engage from these four particular energies I was talking about these emotional energies, what you do is you control the mind you bring into that moment. And friends, that's the psychological edge that drives your method edge. That's how you learn how you start performing in such a way that you extract more capital out of the markets than you give back in friends, that's the necessity of what you're going to have to do to build a successful trading mind. That is the missing link that unlocks your potential in trading. That's the deal friends. Come and learn, research more, come to the website, take a really look at the articles, take a look at the offerings we have. If you've done nothing, start with the free book and start really exploring and finding out how you truly can produce the mastery to be able to say, you know something? I can become the mine that unlocks my potential to be able to do what trading can deliver. Good luck, friends. I wish you well.